Could this cost Labour dear next time?
April 25th, 2009
Or might it be the means to re-igniting the party after a defeat?
For psephologists, one of the most interesting policies expounded by the Conservative party is that they will introduce individual voter registration to ‘restore the integrity of the ballot‘. It is considered a severe loop-hole that households are the registering unit at present, and that this leaves the system open to vote fraud - a problem that can be compounded by postal voting.
No-one can be certain of the effect of individual registration. It has been suggested that recent migrants, those with less-than-fluent English, and lower socio-economic classes could be the most difficult to convert into individually registered voters. This, apparently, could cost Labour in demographics that it is strongest. I will leave the detailed and quantifiable assessment of this claim to Mike Smithson - their analysis would be better-informed that I could be - but there seems a plausible truth that the groups most likely to convert wholesale to the new method are the affluent, educated, middle-classes.
The integrity of elections being paramount, I don’t actually disagree with the policy itself, but there is (of course) a partisan political angle. If a Conservative-minded activist was ready to rejoice at depressing the Labour vote, a Labour-minded partisan might also see huge advantage for his party in this proposal.
We still don’t have a full-grasp on the US model of campaigning - in spite of canvassing activity, the US parties had a much, much higher proportion of activists working the streets than we will ever see at our next election. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of them is (I suspect) the cri-de-guerre of voter registration.
Getting people to campaign for a party, with its policy platform and recent history, can be difficult - a shy activist might agree, but doubts and foibles might mean that their tepid support prevents them from becoming a door-knocking activist. The argument I would make is that giving moderately-engaged potential activists the task of voter registration would be a huge boon for Labour if this policy was enacted.
Getting people registered to vote is axiomatically good if you’re a democrat. Making sure that all who are entitled to register are on the electoral roll is a fundamentally ‘good thing’. Even the supporter who doesn’t feel comfortable defending recent policy decisions can be sent with a rosette, doing the door-to-door registrations with an easy heart - the inherent moral rightness of their activity, juxtaposed with a rosette, converts the wavering supporter into a street co-ordinator. Combine with that idea that Labour would tell a story about the Conservatives ‘disenfranchising the dispossessed’, and you have the sort of battle-cry that could inject real vigour into an otherwise demoralised party (should it lose the next General Election).
Mike has spoken before of the attitude he found in the Labour Party - “the Labour Party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing’ - the feeling of innate moral superiority to the Conservatives, a view that would be re-enforced if given this opportunity. My feeling is that, whatever short-term loss of votes Labour might suffer, that the energisation of the activist base with a new moral mission would be hugely beneficial in helping resurrect them from the depths of defeat.
I don’t think the policy is necessarily being imposed for partisan reasons, though it will be painted that way, and I think it could be a very important move to make elections beyond reproach. However, if one considers the partisan and electoral implications, I think the benefit to Labour in the medium-term could outweigh any loss of votes in the short-term.
Morus
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First?
First!
Last thread, 451. GQ: Darling’s 2009 forecast (as in the PBR) is middle of the range:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/200904forecomp.pdf
2009 GDP Average Forecast: -3.4, High: -1.3, Low: -4.5
And when you look at the detailed data, they’re using a bunch of out of date forecasts to skew the average…
The real issue coming up is ZNL fiddling with postal ballots. They’re using most of Mugabe’s playbook already and road tested it in Glenrothes, so why not on the big one?
4. saddo April 25th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
The difference is ZanuLabour have not got the armed forces on side
ZanuLabour may have some Police on there side but there are enough opposing numbers to stop them en mass.
3 - If people don’t update their forecasts much, not a great deal can be done by HMT. Nonetheless, it is ones in the last three months that are used in that headline -3.4 - the ones in the main table that are older than that are not used to calculate the average. You can still see the deterioration in forecasts in the headline table though, as the March figure was -3.1.
Further, in the detailed tables those made in the current month have a star, and the average of those is also noted in the summary at the end of the table. The average there is -3.7, which Darling’s forecast range includes (albeit the central case is -3.5).
In terms of ramifications, there is also the factor that an increased need for voter registration sways the balance somewhat from winning over the median voter towards energising the, or one of the, bases of the party. Obama’s mobilisation of the antiwar movement and Bush’s mobilisation of the evangelical churches were key to both of their successful campaigns.
Morus O/T But any thoughts on this from a Plaid Blog.
“(1) This is just a bit of fun - when I’ve done this kind of thing in the past people have made too much of it by far. Don’t take things so seriously - nobody can predict with 100% precision.
(2) I’m basing these predictions on the results an election would have if held today. The political landscape is very changeable at the moment. Things could be very different a year from now.
Ynys Môn 25% - this constituency was in Tory hands in the 80s. Although it was the fourth worst result in the last general election, they were damaged by Peter Rogers. If Peter doesn’t stand they’ll come second (to Plaid Cymru), or perhaps - with quite a bit of luck, first. If Peter stands, they haven’t a hope. Albert has little hope of holding the seat.
Alyn and Deeside 20% - if Labour have a very bad day it’s possible that this will be the only seat left to them in Wales outside of their coal field strongholds - except in Swansea East.
Cardiff South and Penarth 35% - the safest seat for Labour in Cardiff, and the only one that hasn’t been in Tory hands in recent memory. Parts of the constituency have become wealthy, and on a very bad day for Labour that could make a difference.
Clwyd South 35% - this seat should be a safe Labour seat - it would need a 10% swing against them to lose - but it will become a marginal seat.
Cardiff West - 45% Rhodri Morgan’s constituency has fallen to the Tories once before in 1983. The difficulty for Labour here is that elements of its traditional support are showing signs recently of turning to Plaid Cymru - especially the ethnic minorities. That could split the anti-Conservative vote. This fear is what drives Rhodri Morgan and Ramesh Patel’s efforts to ethnicise the debate surrounding the reorganization of schools in the constituency.
Delyn 50% - there was only a 2% difference between Labour and the Tories in the Assembly elections, although it was 29% in the Westminster election. The Labour vote will be in the 30s next time - maybe it will be enough, but it will be very close.
Bridgend 55% - Carwyn Jones held the seat with ease in the Assembly elections. Labour could hold Bridgend - but it’s very likely that their share of the vote won’t be much higher than 35%. They need the anti-Labour vote (Tories and Lib Dems) to be quite even. If that happens Labour can hold the seat - but Labour could easily fall.
Gower 50% - the 8% swing the Tories need is certainly possible - but it will be close.
Vale of Clwyd 55% - it was very close between the Tories and Labour in the Assembly elections, although there was a gap of 14% in the Westminster elections. That might not be enough.
Newport West 55% - the 7% swing the Tories need to win is within what recent polls have been suggesting. They could win here, and so Paul Flynn could lose his seat.
Carmarthen West and Pembrokeshire South 70% - the seat has fallen to the Tories in the Assembly, and Nick Ainger’s 5% majority isn’t enough to hold it. Another problem for Labour is that a good performance by Plaid Cymru could further damage their chances.
Vale of Glamorgan 70% - UKIP saved Labour in the Assembly election. That won’t happen this time, and a 4% majority isn’t even close to being enough.
Cardiff North 80% - a traditional Tory seat (until 1997 anyway) that has already fallen to the Tories in the Assembly with a substantial swing. This seat is quite sure of returning to the Tory fold.
Aberconwy 60% - Labour lost this seat to Plaid Cymru in the Assembly. There are a lot of English immigrants in the constituency, and it’s reasonable to suppose that many of them are more likely to vote in a general election than in an Assembly one. This will be advantageous for the Conservatives - but Plaid Cymru can win, if Phil can convince enough people that he can stop the Tories. The local and Assembly election results suggest that Labour has no hope whatsoever of holding the seat.
Clwyd West 75% - a seat held by the Tories in Westminster and the Assembly, but with a comparatively low share of the vote. The only way the Tories could lose is if tactical voting is used against them - but that won’t happen until they are in power in Westminster.
Preseli & Pembrokeshire North 80% - the same situation as for Clwyd West.
Monmouth 99% - the only reason I haven’t given them 100% here is that nothing is completely certain in politics, but it’s the nearest to it. David Davies could get 60% of the vote, with a share similar to the Labour one in the Rhondda.
Montgomeryshire 45% - this shouldn’t be winnable by anyone other than the Lib Dems - but the unfortunate circumstances regarding Lembit’s personal life, and the fact that Glyn is a strong and moderate candidate gives the Tories some hope of taking the seat for the second time in their history.
Breckon and Radnorshire 50% - the Tory vote will increase, and it’s likely the Lib Dem one will decrease, and 10% isn’t a large majority. What could save the seat for Roger Williams is tactical voting by the 15% who supported Labour in 2007″
‘ZanuLabour’ is a bit harsh - after all, Agriculture was the only non-governmental sector to grow in Q1.
Labour’s policy must be good for white farmers!
5 Good thought.
Given they send troops into war zones with useless equipment, provide slums for their families to live in, and treat the Gurkha’s with utter contempt, the forces are unlikely to support them too much.
Further to my 3, the range and quartiles for forecasts made in April are:
2.6-3.5-3.8-3.9-4.5
Darling’s forecast is very much on the optimistic side of the range.
Edit: clarified first line.
6. The forecasts I am most familiar with - Global Insight and Oxford Economics - update their numbers on an almost monthly basis. I would be surprised if the others, particularly investment banks, are less regular. Also, forecasts have been getting worse every month since Autumn last year, so the argument that a lack of updating is to blame is weak, IMO.
FPT:
Socrates: “I think Tyson’s view that an appropriately spent youth involves getting blitzed out your brain at every possible opportunity shows that immaturity can last well into middle age. I agree with the criticism that young people in politics tend to be Miliband-types, but there is a wide range of life experience that can exist between these two types.”
Fair point. However, I spent my youth getting monged on heroin, E, crack, acid and tippex, such that I nearly died several times of an overdose. I went to prison on a rape charge following a theatrically S&M relationship with an heiress.
I was so keen on destroying myself in the most jubilant way possible, I got in knife fights in Marseilles, got kidnapped by hezbollah, got stranded in Siberia where I didn’t eat for three days, became an opium addict in Cairo, lived in a Bangkok hotel that did heroin on room service, was hospitalised due to too much wanking, and I thought I’d fathered a child on a hooker but I hadn’t.
Clearly I am an idiot of the first water. And yet, I predicted that the third quarter of 2009 would most likely see continued UK recession or stagnation contrary to the predictions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer - and it turns out I WAS PROBABLY RIGHT.
Go figure.
I wonder if this would have much impact in terms of electoral outcomes; the sort of people who couldn’t be bothered to register are probably the sort of people who can’t be bothered to vote under the current system.
8 - I’d agree with much of that - I assume the %s are % chance of a Tory victory in each seat? If so, I think they’ll get the ones marked at 50% or over, but the others are a real stretch.
8. Montgomery must surely be safe for such a political giant as Lembit Opik.
14 - I would tend to agree in that, but it is likely that it would have a marginal impact.
On topic: I’m very much in favour of individual registration, but US-style registration by the parties is a bad idea. I’m not entirely sure how to get one without the other though…
11 - In the top half, yes, but not wildly optimistic in terms of what others are predicting. It was also based on a Q1 figure of -1.5, which turned out to be -1.9. What was the consensus forecast among outside firms for Q1 (which by definition are recent forecasts)? Yep, -1.5.
12 - I pointed out the regularity aspect, and the most recent ones from each contributor are included in the summary. As for the most up-to-date, yes, it is -3.7, which is slightly worse than Darling’s central forecast of -3.5.
Looking at your two, Oxford Economics forecast -3.2 (above Cx’s range) and Global Insight have -3.8 (below the range). The average is -3.5, the centre of Darling’s forecast range.
If you want someone wildly optimistic, look at Goldman Sachs.
As for my personal opinion, we’re looking at a contraction of about -4.5 this year. Interestingly, this is the same as CEBR, who forecast Q1 as -2.0, the most pessimistic of forecasters for Q1, and who happened to be much more accurate than the average (-1.5).
If individual voter registration was good enough for us across the water here then there’s no reason why it isnt good enough for the rest of you.
How many people who are entitled to vote are not registered under the current system?
I have found quite a few recently, but they are mostly people who have just moved in.
And another thought, Morus. If, in general, young people are not much bothered by the electoral process and its outcomes (ie traditional and generic cynicism and laziness), why are they suddenly going to be inspired to go out and register new voters?
I don’t think this is the answer to Labour’s electoral problems.
Morus. Will a defunct and near bankrupt Labour party be capable of gathering such supporters? Labour at present is not a moral crusade. It is a bunch of lying thieving smearing morons. Electoral defeat will not magically cleanse them of this. So much will depend on whether Labour falls into a period of internal dissent and who leads the party.
A charismatic leader who can throw off the shackles of the past and remake the party as one for social justice and social democracy, that is willing to acknowledge past errors and admit that the 50% tax rate is just a stupid stupid piece of posturing, could indeed lead to a resurgence in activists and these activists could indeed participate in voter registration drives. I can’t think of a single one of the present mob who fit that profile. Cruddas, as an outsider and one with true Labour credentials is a possibility, but I foresee battles between him and the modernisers and I suspect he might espouse the moronic 50% tax rate.
18 - It seems to work perfectly well in Canada without party intervention, LS.
Firstly, you can register when you fill in your tax return. You tick the box to say “I would like to register to vote” and your details gets put into the provincial electoral database.
Otherwise, as now in BC, the tv and radio carry ads saying “There’s an election coming up. Are you registered? If not, this is what you do.”
Not a particularly tricky situation.
If people choose to live in a bubble and never read the paper/watch the news then I’d probably assume they’re better off not voting anyway due to being ill-informed.
You are correct, I believe, that a party based registration drive has certain connotations that are not preferable but getting people to have the drive to register individually in any way - if they were not previously - should at least lead to the previously uninterested thinking “well I should probably learn what’s going on” before the voting takes place. (In an ideal world anyway.)
19. Fair enough. Do you know what reasoning GS have to be so hopeful?
21 - Ken, I would rather have the Labour Party be honest and admit that it DOES stand for 50% and higher tax rates and that it does believe in people who achieve paying more.
I’m not convinced that they ARE a party of social democracy, just socialism.
For social democracy, much as I’m loath to say it, I think you have to look to the LibDems and that’s why this is a crucial time for them to stand up and try to replace the Labour Party as the sensible opposition to the Conservatives.
19. Surely the job of a prudent government should be to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Darling has been consistently hoping AND preparing for the best for the last year, and ignoring the worst case scenario, and he has been proven wrong time and again. This means his entire political/economic framework has been consistently askew; it also means the voters feel he is lying.
This isn’t funny. Nor is it good.
I wouldn’t trust a f*cking bank manager who told me “Oh you’ll probably win the Booker prize next year, have a £50k overdraft”. I’d sack him.
Ditto the Chancellor. He and his party are simply and purely irresponsible, if not morally bankrupt. Fore this alone, they deserve the kicking they are gonna get in the next GE.
Indeed, Labour deserve to die as a party. They have partied on our penny once too often.
FPT. Richard Nabavi flagged up that Paddy Power now have UK Contituency markets. Looks like each one to win a maximum of about £50.
No obvious stand out value. Interestingly Tories are only 9/4 to win Morley and Outwood.
26 - What’s that about a 30% probability?
25 - The issue here, Sean, is that they’ve got away with just this for too long without being called up on it.
Gordon wildly exaggerated growth figures even during the boom times. Hence his building of a structural deficit which, each budget, would be somehow magically cleared by over-trend growth (his over-trend being over and above already over-trend growth, of course).
The reaction to this was muted and has been until only recently.
It’s very hard for them to lose that approach when it has always been a good place to hide in the past.
I think you’re absolutely right and, in a downturn, you should look at the worst case as being the starting point (not least as a quick glance at previous downturns will show you that estimates always and without fail are overly optimistic at the start of the recession and get revised downwards over time).
INTERESTING PROGRAMME ALERT
8PM RADIO 4 TONIGHT
Matthew Parris on working for Mrs Thatcher in No 10 Downing st
29 - I bet he won’t be talking about printers being thrown around back then, MTF.
(Not least because they weighed a freaking lot more back then. Well, the high quality ones - not the cheap arse dot matrix things with the green and white lined paper.)
24. Id. I’d have more respect for them if they had come out with a top rate of 45% instead of the present 40%(for all higher rate taxpayers), and said “Look times are tough, we are going to tax higher earners a bit more, we promise to lower it when we can, and here’s a small hike in the personal allowance”. That would have raised some serious money and shown willing. Instead, the scuzzbuckets went for a ridiculous 50% on the top 2% which will raise nothing on the Treasury’s optimistic forecasts. All the morons who keep saying the 50% is a good thing are economically illiterate.
This is worth reading:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/24/labour-expenses
One of the most savage critiques of the whole New Labour psyche I have ever read. Blistering. Marina Hyde can WRITE.
And where is it published? The Guardian.
This is an intriguing counterweight to all those Tory moans about “The Labourgraph”. Yes the Telegraph newspapers are more prepared to accept lefty opinion pieces, than was once the case; but the same thing is happening, in reverse, at the opposite end of the media spectrum.
Indeed if you want to read the most trenchant assaults on New Labour, you are generally better off reading the Groaniad and the Indy, these days. Because the analyses are more unexpected and therefore more powerful.
Curious.
Morus, some good points, but I think Cameron’s pledge to reduce the number of MP’s and therefore increase the constituency size will do great damage to Labour as many of their inner city and Scottish stronghold constituencies would disappear. If the Conservatives win the next GE, and this change happens, it would probably need another 1997 level GE result before Labour could get back into power. Individual registration may therefore be the least of Labour’s problems.
Individual registration will only have an effect around the margins.
God, it’s hard enough persuading people to vote who HAVE bothered to register; those who don’t bother to register in the first place are unlikely voters anyway.
So, impact?
Small benefit to Con & LD
Small disbenefit to Lab & BNP
29. Maggie Thatcher Fan April 25th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
His book chance witness is interesting on that score too!
O/T - Nadine is going to sue!!
http://blog.dorries.org/Blogs/2009/Apr/25#25
27. James Burdett: What’s that about a 30% probability?
Yeah, 30.77%.
31 - Absolutely with you, Ken. The showboating of the “new higher, higher rate” just proves, yet again, that they don’t understand what they’re doing - quelle surprise.
Of course, in keeping with that, the more damaging part, in my opinion, is the continued denial of the need for extensive cuts to non-essential public spending and for REAL cutbacks in the excesses therein.
To be honest, it doesn’t matter what tax rate they set if they continue to live in a fantasy world with regards to how much can be spent and how fast the recovery will be.
35. Will G. Brown be ordered to give evidence?
Morus - this is a seriously interesting article.
There’s some anecdotal evidence to support what you’re saying. Labour were of course trashed in Rhondda Cynon Taff in 1999. I’m on the outside looking in of course, but key elements in their very quick revival seem to have been enthusing the activist base, and voter registration drives (and PV drives in this case). There is some evidence somewhere - can’t remember where - that the highest increases in registered voters in Wales over the last couple of years has come in odd places, including Cynon Valley if my memory serves me right. Not exactly a seat with a booming population.
11,19
Range of quartiles for 2010 GDP:
+2.5 to +0.7
+0.6 to +0.3
+0.3 to -0.2
-0.2 to -1.0
So in 2010 Darling’s prediction is close to being the most optomistic.
36 - Seems reasonable.
FPT For Morus.
428. Morus
You seem to have have fallen into the trap that those justifying physical diversity always falls into. You indicate you oppose those ‘diverse’ measures that discriminate against you but infer support for attitudes that would promote your demographic.
Why should your preferences be considered anymore important than any other?
In doing so you are playing the divisive game that such politics always becomes and as a result are open to accusations of self-interest.
In my view as soon as that happens the argument made is destroyed.
Without blind meritocracy you will not escape the current mess. This is where we differ in this.
Age, like gender or race or any other physical attribute, should neither be a bar from office or selective criteria for it. Until people get past pigeon hole politics our political system will go backwards and will not progress
37. Id. The spending cuts go without saying. But in the command and control world of Gordo, there is no room to cut the bizarre bureaucracy he has created, yet this is clearly where all the waste is. For this reason alone if no other everyone should vote Conservative at the next election. Public services will be in far better shape under the Tories than under Brown’s Labour.
8 - Who wrote this analysis, Punter?
Andy Burnham 25/1 with PaddyPower to be next Labour leader. Seem like value?
45. Yes.
45 - He probably has a greater chance than those odds imply.
The moral element brings us back to Harriet Harman.
Her crusade for a fair deal for upper middle class women will even attract votes from Conservatives.
That’s weird my post disappeared.
Re Nadine Dorries, Doesn’t that mean No 10 will have to disclose all the e mails., or just those relevant to Nadine??? or are all the others relevant?
45. Yes
Burnham is possibly the equivalent of Hague.
48. John L.
Not as good as Gabble or Adrian Harper.
ken @ 43 the waste is not in the bureacracy (well, some of it is but that was also true under the Conservatives who recruited tiers of managers to run their internal markets).
The real scandal is the billions going from the public sector to management/IT/PFI consultants.
465. To expand on my Yes, it seems to me increasingly likely that Labour will be so loathed and macerated at the next election, and the whole Brown generation will be so discredited, that they will turn to someone utterly untainted by the stench of the prior regime.
This means someone very young, or madly left wing/different, or not in the Cabinet.
That means Purnell, Burnham, Harman, or Cruddas. If Brown goes before the GE then they might turn to a caretaker, but I think it unlikely Brown can be toppled. They won’t want an old, curatorial, Straw-type figure when Brown goes AFTER the next GE.
I suspect even Harman may now be too closely associated with the awfulness of New Labour. Which means Burnham is definite value at 25/1.
LS @ 51 — I’m a punter not a party hack, and Harman’s appeal is surely as I have described.
54 - Well Harriet Harman is much more appealing that Jacqui Smith I guess…
I wish seanT would stop with the booker analogies.
Him winning - or even being longlisted - is of a radically different order of improbability to the 3.5% growth forecast.
I’d say it’s about as likely as a century of 20% growth.
23 - I’m not sure. I think that they assume a strong recovery in financial markets and, looking at their detailed numbers, a relatively large contribution from net trade (due to a much sharper fall in imports than exports).
25 - I agree. The biggest problem we have now is that we’re in recession, but that we’ve gone in to it with public finances in a less-than-brilliant state.
I would like to point out my motivation for bringing up the HMT forecasts. It was due to the rhetoric on the previous thread that the Cx was lying/dishonest with his forecasts, as though they were ludicrous. Now, while I personally disagree with it, it doesn’t change the fact that it is consistent with outside forecasts.
Also, the media before the Budget expected the Cx to give a forecast of -3 to -3.5, whereas he actually did -3.25 to -3.75, so I don’t consider it to be particularly absurd.
What is optimistic, though, is his 2010 onwards figures.
I will say, though, that people by and large get the government that they deserve. What needs to happen is for the basic rate to go up to about 25% and VAT to 20%. That should limit the cuts the next government needs to make. Whoever goes in to the general election saying that, though, won’t be popular. The electorate therefore encourages dishonesty and then complains when it gets it.
52 - One of the key jokes behind the current shambles that is the UK government, John L, is that they have thrown hundreds of millions (I wouldn’t be surprised to see that it was billions but I can’t be bothered to go check it out right now) at consultants to tell them how to do things and have STILL managed to make a complete hash of it.
The usual justification for outside consultancy in the private sector is to give an external validity to a course of action you’ve already determined upon.
In the case of this government, it just appears to be to throw money away as no matter what course of action they choose they can’t implement the changes needed efficiently and their management of the process is weak.
54. I think you misconstrue upper middle class Conservative women. All the women I know, of that description, would find Harman an appalling lefty harpy, shrill, doctrinaire and basically unsound.
To be fair, most Tory women I know of that ilk are under 45. Maybe older Tory women would be more generous. But I’m not convinced.
I reckon Harman would attract precisely ZERO votes because of her gender, from Tories. And she would repel men.
Interesting article. I didn’t appreciate the significance of the proposal. Of course I fully support it. However, I think the article demonstrates the main underlying problem with our democratic system.
It is too reliant on the underlying political parties and suffers from their inability to be impartial.
It further justifies the need for our democratic system to taken out of the hands of the political parties and put under independent non partisan control. We need to seperate the system from those that use it. It should not be reliant on political parties to maintain and promote the system for their own ends.
Along with meritocracy and justice, democracy should be blind!
57 - Well that assumes that the current level of state sector provision is desirable, it certainly isn’t necessary.
52. John L. The consultants are a given. But, I want to see NCRS and a lot of the other paperwork dropped. The NHS, police, social services, schools, would see a dramatic decline in the amount of silly tick box type paperwork they do. Instead operational management would be given back to managers at the sharp end. Stats would be collated, but wouldnt be used for micromanagement. Instead, they’d be used to target an inspectorate/instructors.
So, police wouldnt be told “8 detections this week”. Instead, overall crime levels would be monitored and areas that had higher rates of crime would be visited to see whether it was bad luck/poor management decisions/imperfect procedures that led to higher crime rates. This way, we wouldnt have the insane “8 detections a week” or “Domestic violence” week that the police now suffer from. I reckon it would free up 15% of police time and reduce costs by 10%.
I’m amazed at the idiocies that are perpetrated on the smallest corners of the state. I know teachers working in adult education. They have to produce ever more paperwork “targets”, “lesson plans”, “action plans” go to IT classes, and it’s almost all pointless. But there are dozens of bureaucrats whose job it is to chase up and file these pointless forms.
54/59. John L/SeanT.
I would imagine that upper middle class Conservative women don’t want to be discriminated in favour of because they’re women.
25. GQ
Darling was certainly dishonest about Qtr1 GDP.
And his predictions were clearly on the optomistic side and getting more optomistic further forward.
This after his previous predictions of both the last budget and the PBE turned out to be disasterous.
59 I think the difference in outlook between right wing and left wing women is even sharper than that between right wing and left wing men. Left wing women will view themselves as an oppressed group, even when their own personal circumstances are actually very privileged ones. Right wing women don’t see themselves in that light.
56. lol. fair enough.
However I am now finishing a piece of literary fiction, which will at least have a stab at a Booker prize. Merely by being in the right genre. i.e. At least I’m in the right ballpark.
Darling’s forecast of recovery by summer 09 wasn’t just in the wrong ballpark, it was in the wrong city, wearing the wrong kit, hoping for a game of soccer. It was clearly WRONG.
Yet he made that prediction, while everyone laughed at him. And they’re still laughing.
Did someone tip up Hull City 1-3 Liverpool earlier @ 12-1?
It’s got a pretty good chance!
I know he won’t want to hear it when he gets back but it’s looking like an excellent call by Andy D @ 11:14am on the last thread re the Hull v Liverpool game. He said 3-1 to the Scousers and, with only added time to go, that’s what it is.
A 12/1 shot. Hope he loaded up on it.
67 - Snap!
65. In my limited experience, upper middle class Tory women are often the sharpest operators of all. Shrewd, well educated, unsentimental, and not slaves to the greed and lust of their male counterparts.
It’s no surprise that Thatcher, our greatest peacetime prime minister (albeit not upper middle class) came from this milieu.
These women wouldn’t vote for a Harman just cause they are all “wimmin”. Far from it.
No bureacracy?:
http://www.nhscentreforinvolvement.nhs.uk/index.cfm?content=1&Menu=1
The max you can get on Burnham is £13. I’ve gone for that anyway.
Afternoon all and on the last thread, Morus it was one of the most entertaining on PB for ages. Maybe I should change my name to Double Morus since I am in my 49th year.
It is far better to have some excellent under 30s in the HOC than many of the deadwood 50/60 somethings who only got elected because they had reached the top of some trade union or they had a wife and 2.3 shiny kids and the blue rinse ladies thought they were nice men”. I well remember feeling quite bitter in 1986 being rejected for a winnable seat simply because I was 26 and unmarried. The candidate the blue rinse ladies and retired colonels chose was married, approaching 40 and gave them one of the most disastrous results for the Scottish Tory party in a seat we had held within recent times, a seat we have since had no chance of winning.
In my experience most poliical nerds and would be MPs are 25 going on 52. I realised in my late 30s I had spent almost 20 years in the company of people old enough to be my parents/grandparents, had virtually zero friends of my own age and had spent all those years doing what other people expected me to do, not particularly in hindsight what I wanted to do.
Since entering my forties I have largely done what I want, when I want to and if I can’t be bothered, I don’t. I know I am too old now to become an MP so enjoy things in my private life which 20 years ago I would have feared might make the front page of the NOTW
On thread, I fully support the HOC being reduced from 650 to 500 or even 400 MPs. I also favour individual voter registration. If people cant be bothered to register then why should we bother to chase them to get them out to vote. It will disproportionately affect Labour but then maybe we wont see Labour party workers taking minibuses to homeless hostels, ushering them into the minibus then into the polling station with the promise of taking them to the pub afterwards as I faced in Glasgow Shettleston in 1987.
However I would also slash the amount of money the parties can spend in a general election to force all candidates to fight locally focused elections again. We still have hustings and an eve-of-poll debate in the town hall of the county town. I would also offer people a “none of the above” option on the ballot paper which might encourage more people to vote.
Even though it has badly hurt the Scottish Tory party, I would keep FPTP for Westminster elections and the mixed FPTP/PR for Holyrood but we need to look at both council and Euro election systems because speaking as a Scot, 4 different voting systems for 4 different legislative bodies is beyond the understanding of all but we political nerds.
42 - So I oppose any measure to ensure diversity, but still we don’t agree.
Your problem seems to be firstly that I think diversity is a good thing, even though I think we shouldn’t try to engineer it, because thinking diversity is good implies that I recognise the differences, and that’s somehow divisive.
There is no blindness - people do have different genders, classes, races, backgrounds, professions. I don’t think it’s divisive to notice, or to appreciate those differences. You can have diversity without it being divisive. I think it becomes divisive when you use that as a selection criterion, which is why I oppose shortlists. If you’re not introducing the differences into the selection process, I don’t see the problem.
Your second disagreement is not correct. I’m not promoting young candidates, I’m just saying why shouldn’t they be elected, and using arguments for their election to counter those who would exclude them.
Age, like gender or race or any other physical attribute, should neither be a bar from office or selective criteria for it. Until people get past pigeon hole politics our political system will go backwards and will not progress
The first sentence I completely agree. If you are going to say that even talking in terms of age gender race etc is failing the second sentence, then I can’t agree with that one. There will always be differences, groups, types, classes - I think that is inevitable, and as long as they exist, I don’t see a problem in looking at the benefits of diversity. The problem only comes when you introduce it as a criterion (bar or benefit) for office - as I don’t support that, we really don’t disagree.
You want blind meritocracy. I don’t think blindness is possible, so I want meritocracy - and if diversity occurs *without undermining meritocracy*, I will be pleased.
65/70 They also tend to be very damned hard to impress. Especially if another woman tries the “hard done by” thing on them. The attitude is “I made it on my own merit, what makes you think you should have anything made easy for you. If you’re good enough and you want it enough, you’ll get it”.
56 Slavoj
Although many Booker winners are pretentious rubbish and some are almost unreadable - can anyone truly say they enjoyed reading Midnight’s Children?
The Genesis Secret is at least an easy fun read. Have spotted a couple of errors though SeanT - page 104 says that Douglas is on the western coast of the IOM and IIRC Kekule had a drunken vision of a ring of monkeys with entwined tails in their middle.
seanT: I spent my youth getting monged on heroin, E, crack, acid and tippex, such that I nearly died several times of an overdose. I went to prison on a rape charge following a theatrically S&M relationship with an heiress. I was so keen on destroying myself in the most jubilant way possible, I got in knife fights in Marseilles, got kidnapped by hezbollah, got stranded in Siberia where I didn’t eat for three days, became an opium addict in Cairo, lived in a Bangkok hotel that did heroin on room service, was hospitalised due to too much wanking, and I thought I’d fathered a child on a hooker but I hadn’t.
Best post ever.
24 - Id, I agree with what you’re saying, but I’m not sure what you mean by social democracy. I don’t know any members of the Liberal Democrats who now self-define as social democrats. Maybe Steve Webb and Paul Holmes would fit in that category but they wouldn’t really call themselves that.
54 - The other way of viewing that is: “In spending all that money on consultants to actually do the job, the real scandal is that we still pay billions keeping civil servants on the payroll”
Is all I’m saying…
78 - I love Midnight’s Children, and think it maybe the finest novel in the English language.
(I also enjoyed the Genesis Secret)
While it is true in the past that the labour party has been mor ecrusading than the tory party, the great irony is that this government has provided the tories with the ideal crusading theme - that of civil liberties
76. Morus:
I think there are some unintentional misinterpretations coming in here on both parts so I will now stop playing devil’s advocate.
If diversity occurs *without undermining meritocracy*, I will be pleased.
I can agree with that.
In anycase someone else has posted something that deserves equal attention.
;o)
78. Oooh, annoying. We had factcheckers go over everything. If you’re right (and I’m sure you are), Douglas is just a silly error. Derr.
I am surprised by the Kekule Benzene thing though. I Googled that in depth. Never heard the monkey thing. Fair enough!
You haven’t spotted the biggest howler of all though. My Italian editor did (too late for the UK and US edition). When De Savary is being blood-eagled in his bijou Cambridge cottage, he is gagged by the fiendish aristo-psychotic Jamie Cloncurry.
About five minutes later, he picks up a pen, with his teeth! Despite being gagged!
Tsk.
Morus, unfortunately I missed the discussion on your ‘age’ article, but I just wanted to make a small point I don’t think anyone else did. Realistically, few people are going to be ready to become an MP until 23-24 years old. Therefore when we talk about under-30s in parliament we’re really talking about a fairly narrow 23-29 age range. Do you really think that warrants 20% representation in the House of Commons? That would strike me as gross over-representation.
I don’t know why, but until now I had the distinct impression Morus was older than me. When I first encountered him I think I imagined him as a sickeningly clever whizzkid-type, but then I thought he said something that gave his age away as being quite a bit older. I must have got the wrong end of the stick somewhere.
POLL ALERT
Jon Craig on SKY News saying at Labour Conference news tomorrow of a poll with a huge Tory lead
75. Easteross……..
I fully support the HOC being reduced from 650 to 500 or even 400 MPs.
Can you explain why?
81 - For exactly the reasons I probably didn’t outline well enough back up in 60, Morus.
The problem is not the use of consultants, per se.
It is the chronic failure to efficiently implement change by this government of mis-managers.
Use external justification for what you’re doing if you must - even the private sector does that - but at least be good at actually doing what you set out to do or wanted justification for.
This government was a lost cause the moment Frank Field’s welfare changes were bullied out by Gordon. Everything since then is just worsening the extent of their failure.
27 - For those of us that backed the Tories at 11-4 on Ladbrokes in Poplar & Limehouse (those odds have now gone), the 10-11 on Paddy Power for Labour now looks enticing to cover off that bet.
85 - I think at that point, Sean, most readers are just wincing in imagined pain at the sheer gruesomeness of what you portrayed and haven’t got the inclination to consider the details.
Edit: I’m not sure what that says about your Italian editor that he managed to look past that and focus on the detail (other than that he’s bloody good at his job evidently).
From Conhome:
Hague throws rhetorical kitchen sink at the “decomposing political muckheap” that is Labour’s frontbench
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2009/04/hague-throws-rhetorical-kitchen-sink-at-the-decomposing-political-muckheap-that-is-labours-frontbenc.html
82. Crikey. Is it really that good?? I have heard many people say that they can’t stand it; yet others adore it.
Not having read it, I have tended to err on the skeptical side, which is probably just intellectual laziness (and a loyalty to my dad, whose book was beaten to the Booker by Midnight’s Children).
Yet I think that Ulysses is the best novel in English (closely followed by Pride and Prejudice), but almost everyone says they can’t get through THAT - and I know they are just plain wrong.
Memo to self: read Midnight’s Children.
Now I’m off to watch 24. Ciao.
Morus, you are a true intellectual! But I would say that to be a contender for the finest English novel it needs to be readable to the majority of the population.
Remains of the Day, Life of Pi, Sacred Hunger and Last Orders were all very good IMO.
87 - Oh did he give details?
Red Meteor: Completely agree.
92 - The gloves are off then!
86 - I don’t think there should be a quota, and I don’t think there should be 20% U30s. I’m just saying if, heaven forbid!, as much as 20% of the House was in that bracket, I don’t think Parliament would collapse. To those who think you shouldn’t be elected until 30, I was saying that they are worrying about nothing.
There are a lot of MPs - their individual characteristics (even being very young or very stupid) don’t really matter until they constitute a massive proportion of the House. That’s all.
89 - Part of the problem then is use of Consultants, and what type of consultant is employed. Bringing on Strategy consultancies to plan the programme and then leave seems silly. Getting consultancies to be entirely responsible for the delivery of projects they suggest seems more sensible, no?
what poll are we expecting?
Guido has more details on Nadine law suit
http://www.order-order.com/2009/04/nadine-im-suing-damian-mcbride/
94. another richard. I’ve actually read two of those and have to say I was disappointed with both. Life of Pi and Last Orders. Maybe the hype raised my expectations too high.
87. Easterross. I want to know about this poll!
From Nadine Dorries blog
Just For The RecordPosted Saturday, 25 April 2009 at 15:53
I have instructed and proceeded with legal action.
Obviously, I am not going to say anything at all at this stage, other than that.
Your strategy to “sell” Labour seats at 228,Mike, would now seem like “buying money”
The next instalment in Smeargate is eagerly awaited and lookingly likely that NuLabour will consistently poll below below 30% in the opinion polls.
87. I heard the same thing. Does anyone have an idea whose poll it might be?
93 - It really is. The only novel I would rate more hightly is ‘Immortality’ by Milan Kundera, but that wasn’t originally written in English.
I have never succeeded in getting past page 6 of Ulysses, and I cannot stand Jane Austin.
94 - I liked all of those, except Life of Pi. It seemed like watered-down Rushdie, or a fastfood version of Vikram Seth. Remains and Last Orders were both arguably as good as films as they were as books.
33: The Guardian and especially the Indie have been anti-New Labour forever - they are the print equivalent of Channel 4 News. There isn’t actually a specifically pro-New Labour paper, and never has been (except possibly the FT) - there’s the Old Labour Mirror, which tolerates New Labour, and the Guardian/Indy, who give rise to the term Guardianista. It’s always been a minor scientific miracle that the Guardian manages to slag us off for four straight years and then endorse us at elections.
As a matter of interest - I promise I’m not getting at you - what was your view of prison life, as one of the few there who’ve actually experienced it? I appreciate you weren’t there for long. My sum total of knowledge is from a tour round Nottinghma prison once, which prompted this:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BroxtoweInfo/message/420
85.
Well I think the Kekule monkey story arose in a school chemistry lesson so it might not be the most common one - it’s more scientifically correct though than the snake tail in mouth version .
Haven’t got as far as Cambridge yet but is it always impossible to pick up a pen with your teeth while gagged? Would depend on the gag I suppose?
Still its a good read so far - the two separate stories (police/archeology) make it less episodic than the continuous narrative of the Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.
Election this year looking more likely!
92. jsfl. Cameron described the Labour front bench as “the living dead”. Now Hague calls them “the decomposing political muckheap”. Looks like an agreed line of attack. Not edifying. It’s the sort of language that could rebound on The Tories as still being “The Nasty Party”.
107 - Warum?
54, 62. The assumption that consultants are by definition a waste of money is an interesting one. 90%+ of the most successful CEOs in the world choose to bring them in to improve a situation which their internal people have failed to solve. Given my experience of the public sector, they need more external help than private firms. Yes, many consulting firms don’t achieve results, some make themselves permanent, and some are brought in just because middle managers want to pass the buck for decision making. But assuming they’re all a load of rubbish is as ridiculous as the anti-banker sentiment going round. If they were all universally a waste of money, the industry would not be as successful as it is. We should certainly have a performance review and get rid of those firms that do not achieve results, but the good ones can and do help. Blanket categorisation is a stupid policy.
98 - On the age thing, my take is that the key problem with younger MPs is that they are much more likely to be “just lobby fodder”. It is the party set up and the overwhelming strength of the party system that makes younger MPs less desirable. Reduce the party domination and “good” candidates of every variety are eminently desirable.
(Although I retain “experience” concerns which are more focused on younger MPs not being suitable for managerial/executive roles rather than on their idealism and ability to think and provide different and valuable opinions.)
Re the consultants, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a project done that way. The consultants don’t want to be in that level of detail. They walk in, provide the report they’ve been paid to produce and the justification it gives to management. It’s then management’s job to implement it.
I think what you’re wanting is a wholesale change in the management structure of - and the type of manager that exists in - the public sector.
Not forgetting, of course, that the real failure here comes from Labour, their party links to the public sector unions who have a vested interest in the status quo and the (lack of) quality of their ministers who are, after all, the top level managers.
Morus
Remains and Last Orders were great as films. Helped of course by the great cast and general production quality. Similar situation to Godfather.
107-Yes i think so if the knives are really sharpening from within the bunker.
What i dont understand is why perfectley sane people seem still to be supporting GB…
If he really has gone off the rails in the way that insiders are saying then perhaps it is part of the “men in grey suits” strategy to keep him in no10 for the moment.
108. Anyone who says “nasty tories” will be swiftly reminded of smeargate, which of course will be front page news for some time to come.
110 Socrates - The issue with consultants is very often related to the quality of the brief they are given. The public sector seems to be particularly bad at getting this right - confused goals being the main reason, I suspect, plus a tendency to write the brief by committee, so everything gets thrown in.
104 see 8.
88 jsfl, we have a population of around 60 million in the UK and of those 60 million, 10 million already have MP equivalents at national level in addition to UK level.
In Scotland, Wales and N Ireland we have councillors,MSPs (and equivalents) MPs and MEPs.
In England you have Parish councillors, borough, metropolitan or county councillors, MPs and MEPs.
Until 1997 we had the situation that most MPs outide Greater London had to make some effort to get to Wetminster and the principal means of communication were landline telephones and letters.
Today we have direct daily flights from around two dozen regional airports to London, we have more trains though generally the road network is in poorer condition due to underinvestment by Labour.
MPs routinely work using mobile phones, blackberries, email etc etc. A great many issues previously dealt with at Westminster are being devolved down to councils/national parliaments or up to Brussels. They therefore have far less to do than say 30 years ago.
I can see no reason why an MP cannot represent 100,000 voters. No-one has suggested the Tory MP for the Isle of Wight cannot do his job. Up here in the Highlands which is by far the most difficult area to cover, they could have 1 MP for the Western and Northern Isles, 1 MP for Inverness City and Shire and 1 MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross-shire. That would reduce the number of MPs up here from 5 to 3. The MPs already refer much of their mail bags to the MSPs and where they belong to the same party, share constituency offices.
105. “The Guardian and especially the Indie have been anti-New Labour forever - they are the print equivalent of Channel 4 News”
Jeezus….talk about self-delusion. This takes the all-time prize for wrong-headedness.
Both titles and their Sunday stablemates gave detailed run-downs on how to vote tactically in 1997 to get the Tories out with the specific intent of getting New Lab (not the Lib Dems) in.
They’ve been cheerleaders ever since, with the occasional critical comment on narrow areas of specific policy, just to give a semblance of balance.
There have been no more partisan titles for a political party, in this case New Labour, in the whole history of Fleet Street.
108. stjohn. I agree that if such insults continue persistently you could well be right. There is a limited shelf life to such tactics. It all depends whether the electorate think along the lines that the Conservatives do. If they do then the Conservatives will get away with it however unedifying it is, just as the initiators got way with the John Major underpants prank and so forth prior to 1997.
It all depends on whose side the electorate are on and I get the feeling there are plenty out there who certainly are not on Labour’s side…….
My favourite novels have a strong streak of redemption to them - and are very rarely English language. I am still a sucker for a happy ending!
I’m talking Quo Vadis by Sienkiewicz, or Siddharta by Hesse, or anything by Dostoevsky, or If This Is A Man by Levi. I used to like The Myth of Sisyphus but now find it disheartening.
If we must discuss 19th century English stuff, then well. Austen is overrated (at which point it is obligatory to point out that I am male) but Emma is the best of a bad bunch. Wilkie Collins and Dickens are far better. Best of all is Sherlock Holmes.
Midnight’s Children is rubbish. I haven’t read Ulysses.
I noticed - whilst passing through Catford - that the Lab-Lib.dimmies have an anti postal fraud poster outside the Old Town-Hall. Any chance one exists in Broxtowe*…?
Ok! I’ll save my breath, and withdraw the question!
————————————————————–
* Firefox dictionary equates “Broxtowe” as “Brownness”. You could not make it up….
87,95 How big is “huge”? Presumably significantly bigger than YouGov’s 17% Tory lead, on which they reported earlier this week and therefore > 20%.
Just for fun, my guess would be:
Tory……46
Labour….25
LibDem….19
Others….10
Surely no worse for Labour or it’s goodbye Gordon.
Anyone know who the pollster is?
So does anybody know who we are expecting a poll from tonight?
115. I do not dispute that. A good strategy consultancy should be able to spot and sort this out themselves and take it back to the client, but obviously that’s not going to happen when dealing with consultants in other spheres.
122. one poll will not make him go.
BUT, one intetresting thing is that pre-budget we had a mix bag.Post budget, if this rumour is verified, things are going one way.
Do we even know if it’s a full poll or the much-speculated-upon NotW marginals poll?
110. socrates. The main problem with using consultants is that you have to know how to manage them. Asking consultants to organise your managerial structure is pointless unless they are as familiar with the business than those working in it are. They can make suggestions about how a structure should work, but much of the time they don’t understand how the business should work. Much of the consultancy seems also to have gone on the awful tickbox systems stuff that is utterly pointless and very damaging.
In the case of the public sector I’d have to say that consultants seem to have done quite a lot of damage. Maybe that’s because of the mandates they were given or because their advice was ignored, but while I wouldnt rule out consultants outright, I’m not that enthused either. In some areas (unfortunately) we can’t avoid consultants - IT for example.
Conservative women and Harriet Harman.
Sceptics believe the latter holds no appeal for the former. Two words: glass ceilings. There are an awful lot of women in business and the professions who are natural Conservative supporters but who may feel their careers are unfairly limited by their sex.
122 - Of course, more fun would be;
Con 45
Lab 22
LD 22
Others 11
Huge movement in the last ten days and it’s all against Labour.
I have taken off ALL my pro Labour bets and am now embarked on a fresh quest which must remain secret for now.
Just a note for bookie bettors.I can only have a bet with two or three so scatter my tips around.’Phoned a high-roller in Vegas to get me on this afternoon.
This guy bet regularly in four,five and sometimes five figures.He was restricted to £50 and £31 on two political bets.
On the Gordon Brown front there is little movement.The betting suggests he is 1-2 to lead Labour into next GE.
87 etc Chaps, Jon Craig just reported that the Labour Gen Secretary (he who knew nothing about Red Rag)reported to Labour’s Welsh conference that 1) they are badly behind in the polls 2) they are totally skint and 3) he has word of a poll due tonight which has a huge Tory lead. Nothing more was said.
Nick P, to answer your question, prisons are bastions of hopelessness. I spent 11 nights on remand for a crime I was subsequently acquitted of because the Crown couldnt produce any evidence of criminality.
The majority of people in prison are those sentenced to less than 6 months. In 13 weeks they cannot be taught to read and write They cannot be given even the most basic work training and most imporantly they cannot be given any experience which teaches them the value of self respect through hard work. They just fester and on release tend to re-offend and get sent back to spend another 13 weeks or so doing the same thing.
O/T Nice legs in the picture - good spot Morus!
120 Wibbler, spot on with Wilkie Collins. Currently have “Armadale” on the go.
122. “Anyone know who the pollster is?”
We were told there will be no ComRes this Sunday.
So either YouGov for the Sunday Times or ICM for the Sunday Telegraph. BPIX doesn’t count. Anyway didn’t they report last weekend?
Neither Ipsos-Mori or Populus have previously been commissioned by a Sunday Title.
NoTW marginals, perhaps? A bit too coincidental the weekend after the budget.
129 It would certainly be “more fun” for stjohn - were Labour and Libdems to be tied as I would owe him £50 on a bet we agreed just a couple of days ago when I was foolish enough to give him odds of 2/1.
Aargh!!
My guess is that it is an ICM poll. In the past year they have been commissioned by the Sunday Expresss, the NOTW and the Sunday Mirror.
The Sunday Telegraph had the ICM group poll last weekend.
111 - It depends which Consultancy you use. McKinsey, AT Kearney, Bain, BCG = strat consultancies - they will do the tailor made C-suite report, and they’re off.
Big Four (E&Y, KPMG, Deloitte, PwC) are somewhere in between.
Titans like Accenture, IBM, Cap Gemini are largely interested in running the delivery as well - that’s where the big revenue is.
The problem is the need for them to manage both their own workforce AND the civil servants aligned to them. The other problem is that if the brief has been badly-written by the Gvt Dept, then the project is already in trouble. If the Civil Service has used a permanently-embedded small consultancy to write it, then doubly so.
The answer is for Central Government to do what it is demanding PCTs in the NHS do: stop trying to be Commissioning Bodies AND Service Providers, and concentrate on commissioning.
Central Government should Commission (from both public and private sector providers). Central Government should not undertake Service Provision, because it is barely capable of so doing. By all means set up Public Sector service providers in the shake-up, but make them compete with private sector service providers for the contract.
When the biggest cost is the Public Sector pensions pot, why would you want Civil Servants doing both types of work. Commissioning requires a tenth of the staff, and you transfer into more manageable third-party expenditure rather than pension and salary liabilities. The third party expenditure can be reduced or increased without the associated HR and pension costs, so changing policy always costs less. Third party expenditure is also more easily controlled, because if it breaches certain service or cost conditions, then rebates can be activated.
Good commissioning - it’s the future.
133 MM - Armadale is an extraordinary book. The plot is ludicrous even by Victorian standards, but the long central section where Miss Gwilt is trying to seduce the hero is absolutely superb.
(I am not going to talk to wibbler again. Jane Austen overrated indeed!)
According to Taagepera’s cube-root rule we are overrepresented at Westminster.
Worldwide, lower house legislatures tend to follow the rule
P^(1/3), where P is population.
So for the UK, 60,000,000^(1/3) would imply a legislature size of about 400.
On the other hand, it can be shown the smaller the legislature, the greater the disproportionality of seats from votes.
ICM has had two polls in Sunday papers this year - Sun 8 Feb and Sun 29 Mar, both in the Sunday Telegraph.
130 URW - Maybe worth another trawl of the individual constituency markets, where changes in the odds lag behind.
19th century English stuff? Cousin Phyllis by Elizabeth Gaskell is my favourite, though only a novella. Villette by Charlotte Bronte would be second. I’d be a feminist English lecturer’s dream.
I found Armadale too tedious for words.
Paddy Power quote 5-6 for and against a Tory majority of 50 or more. The constituency seat betting should be assessed with that in mind.
138 Richard - the Penguin Classic cover-bumph describes Lydia Gwilt as “one of the most hardened villains whose devices and desires have ever blackened fiction. She remains among the most enigmatic and fascinating women in C19th literature”.
Sounds like my kinga gal!
So we’re moving to a consensus for ICM.
A ‘huge’ lead for the Conservatives from ICM would be, well, huge
@137: You are absolutely bang on with this; that said, one of the biggest problems we have as a supplier with the NHS in the UK is that they don’t really do commissioning very well, either; by their own admission, they need more support and guidance - they’re rather dumped in at the deep end.
That said, there are a few excellent groups within the NHS that are getting good very good at it now - the screening folks, for instance.
135. Peter. I could see the “fun” in that.
130/141. URW/Richard Nabavi. Sounds like we need to keep backing the Tories. But how and where? The Spread markets would seem to be the obvious answer. But that 5 points they take is just too big. And I only have a debit account so it costs a fortune to tie up 100 times your stake.
What to do?
************* Comres figures in Mail this Morning ********
Mike,
Have you nheard anything from Comres. This morning in the mail it said the polls have mixed opinion of the team best to deal with the economy citing You Gov having Cameron and Osborne on 38% with Brown Darling on 25% and Comres having Brown Darling leading Cameron and Osborne by 38 -35% ? Maybe this would transfer into a better voting intention poll for labour then if they are ahead on the economy ? what do you think ?
144 MM - Yes, the strange thing about the book is that all the ludicrous plot nonsense (especially in the first few chapters) merely serves to obscure what would otherwise be a simple and very well-written story.
118: GeoffH - no, you’re making the same mistake that people complain about here, when they’re assumed to be Tories because they’re anti-Labour. The Guardian and Indy are viscerally anti-Tory. But the point I was making is that neither paper ever favoured the Blairite concept of New Labour, and nor, really, did any other paper. To win three elections without a single newspaper behind your core message is quite striking.
131 - thanks, Easterross, that’s interesting. The Jutice Committee is considering evidence on sentencing, and some of the witnesses are suggesting that all sentences under 6 months are at best a waste of time: a oossible recommendation might be stiffer sentences for serious crime and community solutions for the sort of things that get one 3 months. The counter-argument is that a short dose of prison can have a sobering effect on people who never dreamed it could come to that.
145 - Well it depends on your definition of huge. Some might describe a lead in the high teens as huge. I wouldn’t. I would only describe a 20 point plus lead as huge, but we don’t know what others think. A lead your on the wrong side of probably seems bigger than if you are on the right side of it.
Also, IIRC ICM tend to produce the best LD scores, which would make Id’s suggestion at 129 almost plausible.
137. Morus. Your long description boils down to “outsourcing”. Odd that you don’t use the word. Sometimes that will work, sometimes it doesnt. For example, services that have amorphous targets (eg can’t really be targeted properly) should generally not be outsourced. The police, for instance, should not be outsourced because we cannot find a metric to measure success or failure by (which is also the reason why the target based culture isnt a good idea).
But, yes, for consultants, it all boils down to how and when you use them.
Here is an offer to Mike Smithson.Some time ago I offered you £100-nothing if the Lib Dems got 43+ Seats.
If you like you can email me with your details and I will send you a cheque for £55 ASAP.
141 RN.You have done well.The logistics are too cumbersome for me.
I reakon it’ll be the ICM marginals poll for the NotW. Its certainly due this evening. And it wouldn’t be unexpected for the Tories to have a huge lead in the marginals….
A “huge” lead would surely have to be north of 20%?
47:25 perhaps?
148 wayne, the 38-35 figure is identical to the populus poll in the Times on Thursday - I suspect they mean that one
82. I love Midnight’s Children, and think it maybe the finest novel in the English language.
Better than The Gatsby Magnitude???
re 148. The ComRes poll yesterday for the Daily Politics programme was one I didn’t cover because it has what I consider to be flawed methodology.
The sample is not past vote weighted which means that it would not have been politically balanced.
ComRes and the Daily Politics programme have invited me to a meeting next month to discuss my ongoing concerns.
147. William Hill conservatives
375 - 399 seats 5/1
15o. No, Nick YOU are wrong. They favoured the New Labour concept hook, line and sinker because it suited their anti-Tory tendencies (They don’t call it The Independent for nothing. LOL) and the metropolitan right-on, soi-disant (only G and Indie readers use that) hankerings.
You are being just too prickly for words. Labour (New or otherwise) had the mass of the press right behind it since the mid-90s. Only in recent weeks have the ties been loosened. Deservedly so.
129. If that poll shows Labour at 23% or below, their reputation is well and truly destroyed. The last time it went that low was in the immediate aftermath of the Crewe and Nantwich debacle, after Labour was rocked by the 10p tax band abolition.
For the Conservatives to break through the 50% after this Budget would be fantastic, and for Labour to go to or below an all-time low would surely show the writing on the wall.
Here’s to that poll being appalling for the Government.
131. I wonder if this could be a private poll for the party?
If this is true then it’s a shame I’m out tonight and will miss all the fun! I would be delighted if the LD’s began to overhaul Labour in the polls. As someone who works in the public sector and has seen first hand the waste and incompetence that has built up under Labour I don’t just want them beaten but to be so totally crushed that it will be 30 years before they’re able to challenge for power again. The LD’s would need a pretty spectacular result to become the official opposition, mucking about if Baxter they would need to outpoll Labour by around 10% in a GE to reach that status. Won’t happen next time, pity!
If the Tories have more than 50% or are double the percentage of Labour, I would consider it huge.
To be quite frank, it’s not surprising and I would expect other very large to huge polling results next week after a weekend of hammering the budget.
It doesn’t stop there, after something of a lack of press coverage, the Tories are back in the news with Hague over Europe, Gove over Primary schools and Cameron over a need for a change of government. Far more than the coverage that’s come out of the Labour conference.
Looking very very bad for Labour then, it seems.
146 - Yeah, commissioning in the NHS is a bit of a mixed bag. The Regional Procurement Hubs never really took off, and it’s only now the PCTs are all being forced to change that the situation is being addressed.
For all its faults, NHS PASA (which does ‘direct’ procurement) is a decent-if-outdated model. The problem with NHS procurement, it seems, is that even where it does the nuts-and-bolts procurement well, there is still a lack of commercial capability in the earlier stages of commissioning.
Good Management Information is a prerequisite, and that is still sorely lacking at a PCT or SHA level. The ‘make v buy’ strategic decision-making is not ingrained in organisations that have normally only ever done ‘make’. Assessment of the requirements of internal demand as a means to defining what should be bought, or put to the make-v-buy decision is not mature enough by a long way. Risk-mitigation (both financial and clinical) is not an essential part yet of the commissioning process - let alone targetted spend for broader economic aims (support of local SMEs for example). Sustainability and ethical procurement are there as token advances, but are not emedded into basic commissioning processes.
If the NHS gets commissioning right, they could save billions. If Central Government developed a good, public-sector specific model for commissioning, it could save tens of billions. Cuts does not have to mean losing frontline staff.
Thing is, the chance of any of these improvements occuring without the support of the leading consultancies - slim to none.
98. Morus, not normally the remit of consultants to follow through on projects , they come in give their advice and leave it for others to dothe actual work.
@153: Technically, I don’t think that making PCTs responsible for commissioning and other bodies responsible for delivery *necessarily* implies outsourcing, depending on your boundaries within the system.
However, the current mess of commissioning, delivery, local monopoly contracts and other 3rd party suppliers where noone knows what anyone is doing, and there is no expert support for the difficult bits, cannot go on. It is (in my view) the prinicple cause of the failure of Labour’s expensive experiment with the NHS.
As I think I might have banged on about here, before (sorry)…
148. Its probably refering to the non-weighted comres poll for the BBC. Ignore it.
163 I did wonder if this could be a private poll for the party too - unless Labour were tipped off by the polling company to “brace yourselves for a bad ‘un….”
Oh, and Spurs are 1-0 up!
169, against Manchester United? Hurrah! [If that is the case].
147 stjohn.I tried to reply but it got swallowed up by Mr.Spam.
ManU 0 Lills 1.
170 Yup!
117. Easteross. Whilst you identify the key metric - representatives to electorate. I am unconvinced with your arguments.
As Nick Palmer points out improved communications have issues regarding increased availability and access that increases the workload overhead. Therefore cutting the number of representatives whilst workload is increasing is likely to be detrimental to the services provided.
Using sleepy areas such as the IOW and Scotland are unrealistic. How can you compare the workload of such a constituency with an inner city constituency of similar population?
Similarly, with the transport examples they are red herrings. Try getting around London in the same timescales as you can get around the north of Scotland.
Further to that your response does not even consider the Parliamentary workload and how that might change or whether worlkload is corrently allocated at any level of Government or how that workload might interchange. Let alone any considerations regaridng the return of powers from the EU?
Nor does it consider the relative disparity between the democratic systems now in place in the 4 home nations. Why should Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have a potentiality better level of democracy than England?
Apologies but whilst there could be a coherent justification for reducing the size of Parliament yours doesn’t come close to convincing me. That is the problem with those who have promoted the idea (Cameron, Clegg) seem to be doing it for all the wrong reasons without the necessary analysis and IMO when people do that it always ends up with unintended consequences that damage what it is that is intended to be fixed.
Great threads, especially the last one. I amazed with some posters age. I guess JackW is the oldest one
*I am..
2-0!!!
Something’s suddenly occurred to me.
Could it be possible that Labour activists are now deliberately playing up prospects of massive Tory poll leads in order to demoralise and plant doubt in Tory activists when the poll leads aren’t as big as expected?
129 Even more fun would be something like Conservative 50%, Labour 22%, Lib Dem 20%.
Didn’t someone say they got YouGov’d for a poll with a submission date closing on Friday afternoon? It obviously couldn’t have been Thursday’s bombshell, must be another!
@165: I agree; as someone who has negotiated PASA contracts in the recent past, I think that, sadly, they are somewhat disconnected from the realities of local commissioning. Effectively, you work through a PASA contract negotiation, sign the PASA contract, and then go through the whole process again every time with every local commissioning body.
It is even worse when you are dealing with cross-boundary projects; then you are herding cats as SHAs are (in practice) disempowered by the PCTs as spending bodies, but rarely have the ability to support the PCT purchasers. If you need a whole bag of PCTs to agree on the appropriate delivery model, you end up negotiating individually and collectively, and sometimes there are PCTs across SHA boundaries involved too.
The fundamental missing piece is central expertise on which local commissioners can call.
Nadine wading in with the lawyers. I wonder if she is acting against McBride and the man who has apologised to her and taken full responsibility for what happened - presumably he will be happy to take the rap should the courts find for Ms Dorries
157,
Oh yes that would be it thanks
127. I think its difficult to generalise here, because these sort of issues obviously can happen in very context depending on the type of consultancy work you are after. But if its changing the management structure then that is probably because there was some serious issue with the structure before that wasn’t working, and internal people find it difficult to have a fresh perspective. It is the job of a good consultancy to actually get the necessary information from their client and work with internal people to develop a solution collaboratively. If they do that right then potential trouble areas from the change should be identified and incorporated into the solution. The leader of any consultancy team will usually have experience in the industry so should know how the business should work. Good consultancies also develop tailored approaches to each client. If that isn’t happening then the problem isn’t that you use consultancies, it’s that you’ve got the wrong lot in.
Obviously we all have our own experience, but many doctors and nurses I know working in the NHS swear by some of the company’s that have turned around their hospitals etc.
I’m also very troubled by the Conservatives stated views on this. On the one hand they criticise centralised decision making and argue that management needs to happen at a closer level to the action, but on the other they seem to imply they will be using minister’s diktats to ban consultants from the public sector. If they really do that I can see the necessary reform of public services, particularly in the NHS, slow down massively. That will only come back to bite them in the voting booth.
147 This is only a rumour at present and the figures themselves are even more of a rumour, therefore I’m sitting on my hands - well it keeps them warm.
For those who really must bet, Victor Chandler’s 5/1 on 175-199 Labour Seats looks like the place to be or alternatively an evens money sell of Labour seats at 216 on Betfair’s recently launched Party Seats Line. Personally I prefer the VC bet.
159,
Mike, Did it have any voting intention, i suspect not or it would have been everywhere?
Great website by the way!
159 That Comres poll has been reported across the media and mentioned in comment pieces - it had attraction for the lefty of showing high support for 50% tax and an interesting lead for Brown/Darling (that was not reflected in the YouGov weighted and larger sample poll). Unlikely there would have been huge difference with past vote weighting but could be statistically significant difference.
Comres can argue that as it isn’t voting intention the need for weighting is reduced. In so far as the poll should be reflecting what the public think I would agree that propensity to vote/turnout filters shouldn’t apply but with strong divergence of opinion by party support weighting to age & party support seems sensible.
181. Have a look at Guido for info on the law suit
Frank Field on Sky laying the boot in ‘The question is not is New Labour dead, but is the country dead?’
@183: I very much doubt that the Tories really intend to ban consultants from the public services.
However, I think that a bit of a root-out of ineffective management and administration, hiding behind the consultants, is long overdue.
There has been some very good work done by the big consultants in the NHS, but there is a layering problem where responsibilities are inappropriately devolved (or centralized) without access to the necessary management and technical resources to do the job right.
174. Me. Agreed about the threads. I have been surprised how OLD everyone is! At 19 I’m wondering if I might be PB’s youngest poster?
184 PfP.The 7-2 150-199 with WH is still superior.
Tory majority best prices I can see
325 - 349 9/2 Ladbrokes
350 - 374 7/2 Ladbrokes
375 - 399 5/1 William Hill
400 - 424 10/1 Victor Chandler
Someone smarter than me can work out the value
My predictions at Old Trafford.
1. Man U win. 2. Red Card in the match.
I have just had an epiphany - Field is criticising the opposition as well and saying he is ‘looking for leadership’ - Cameron has a speech tomorrow. Is Field laying the groundwork to jump ship?
He says there is no time for a leadership challenge…
190 were you born on Feb 29th?
“I haven’t read Ulysses.
by wibbler April 25th, 2009 at 5:27 pm”
This disqualifies you, by itself, from any discussion of The Greatest English Novel. Sorry. Would you listen to someone who said “I have never heard of Led Zeppelin” and then pontificated on The Greatest English Rock Band?
Quite.
Re the other discussion, Pride and Prejudice is the Greatest English Novel Except Ulysses because every single line moves the plot forward in the most incredibly ruthless and exemplary way. The best Hollywood scriptwriter could not do better.
On top of that, it is a merciless dissection of Georgian society, a bravura display of characterisation, it is of course beautifully written, it boasts sparkling dialogue, it has hugely absorbing heroes and heroines, the love story is richly compelling, AND its genuinely laugh-out-loud funny.
All in about 280 pages.
Don’t get me wrong, I despise women’s writing as much as the next red blooded British male. But Pride and Prejudice is a peerless and timeless masterpiece.
194 - Yes but everything he said Cameron has pretty much already said.
190, joo r teh n00blet!!!!111
194. Disws. A Blue Epiphany ?
178. Sean Fear: Even more fun would be something like Conservative 50%, Labour 22%, Lib Dem 20%.
Wells: Con maj 290
Baxter: Con maj 296
Me: Con maj 280
Many would laugh.
193 So three second half goals without reply? Yer reckon? That is going to need to be quite a half-time hairdryer!
My guess is Con 46 Lab 22 Lib/Dems 21
195. Ted. LOL!
198. Morris Dancer. ??. Is this to test out my age?
199 a rather silly epiphany - but it seemed very odd is all. He was almost advertising his loyalties…
190-StJohn-
No, I’m the youngest, I just made 18! 
201. Marquee Mark: So three second half goals without reply? Yer reckon? That is going to need to be quite a half-time hairdryer!
Nah, all it needs is 45 minutes to score two goals, and then as much as they need for the winner…
160 Scott - I don’t think Hills are offering this bet - their equivalent is 7/2 for 150-199 seats, but VC are offering the odds you suggest on 175-199 seats.
203, l33t is actually something I was blissfully unaware of for some years. I’m surprised you seem unfamiliar with it…
206, me and a friend at school had a bit of a running joke about that.
“Manchester United scored the winner in the 57th minute of injury time!”
196 SeanT
I would have thought Wuthering Heights would be more your style.
Surely P&P is a little bit twee for you?
Anyway the best Victorian novel is Dorian Grey.
206 With at least one being Man U’s obligatory Old Trafford penalty…after the Spurs goalie is red-carded.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm…………….
196. Perhaps we should disqualify you for never having read midnight’s children.
208 l33t is teh better dan joo dancing man of Morris, gr8 cawl tho
ugh, I need a shower now
re 190 The idea that you are 19 StJohn is as likely as JackW is 106.
208. MD. I guess I’m too young.
150. Nick P. “To win three elections without a single newspaper behind your core message is quite striking.”
Even more amazingly, you didn’t actually HAVE a core message, apart from “vote for Labour MPs, so we can become as rich as possible, while ruining the country”.
Well done.
This would be fun
A better solution is for the Commons to reclaim its independence in dramatic fashion. A new Speaker is the first thing needed. Michael Martin, the current incumbent, is a disgrace who should be removed immediately in a Palace of Westminster coup. Where he should have taken charge of the clean-up of parliament, he has cowered like a big feartie behind his Speaker’s chair.
There is no tribal politics in this. A group of the most senior MPs from all parties should meet Speaker Martin and tell him that if he does not step down within 24 hours a vote of confidence in his abilities will be tabled, which he will lose. Then his replacement can be elected. In the past I have written that Frank Field, the Labour MP, is the best candidate. But Sir Menzies Campbell would have a claim, as would the former shadow home secretary David Davis. There are others.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/iainmartin/5220889/No-new-quango-this-House-must-put-itself-in-order.html
190 stjohn - lived a stressful life have we?
BTW Don’t you have to be 21yrs minimum to open a spreadbetting account?
I am 37 in the interests of age disclosure - my look is youthful but I have had a hard life - so it averages out and I look 37
On the Man U game. I recall a match at White Hart Lane some time ago when Spurs were 3-0 up at half-time and ended up losing 3-5.
On the poll given the description is a ‘huge lead’ like others I suspect it will be in the region of 25 points.
207. PfP It looks like it on my screen
How Many Seats Will The Conservatives Win At The Next General Election? - Outright
X
Best Odds Guaranteed!
375 - 399 seats @ 5/1 ( Take SP )
* Minimum Stake : 0.03
* Maximum Stake : 50.00
214 Maybe StJohn has “Hutchinson-Gilford syndrome” - like Sebastian in Blade Runner?
Tory MP to sue? Over private emails? Is this the future of Britain under a Tory government?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8018647.stm
137 - Good point, Morus. I apologise for not giving 100% thought to your areas of concern. I had overlooked IT/systems consultancy and only given consideration to structural change/best practice consultancy.
In the IT/systems case, it most assuredly is, as others have stated, the Terms of Reference which define the start of the problems. Following that, it’s management oversight and control.
I can absolutely see the need/desirability of employing consultants for specialist knowledge in this case but it needs to be done to a very tight and efficiently monitored specification.
On the Commissioning front, that’s a very sound principle.
However, you have to take into account the potential for merely creating quangos without a competitive environment when you outsource some of this type of activity. Finding organisations that can provide what you want in a non-public environment and therefore building in the efficiency improvements you want is often harder than appreciated.
Your comment on the pensions cost merely highlights the much bigger point on unfunded, unaffordable pensions provision which is something that should be addressed immediately on the election of a Conservative government.
223, sent via the Downing Street e-mail system and disseminated [possibly] to journalists.
222-
223. Guido knows for a fact that the untrue story about her was given to some journalists, and it was alluded to in stories, it was then refined for a second more vicious smear attempt by Damian McBride in the infamous Smeargate emails.
Guido understands that legally even if the intended second round of smears were not published widely in print, she has at least two courses of action for slander and defamation because McBride telling journalists the story on his mobile would be slanderous and presumably emailing the smear to Charlie Whelan, Derek Draper and the Unite press officer Andrew Dodgshon would constitute publication (those are the known recipients of the smear at this time). There are likely to be more…
210. I loved Wuthering Heights. Top ten, certainly. I’d also put Jane Eyre in my top 10. How weird is that? Two sisters in the ten best novels in English.
But for sheer perfection-of-form, Pride and Prejudice every time.
I should say that I find the rest of women’s fiction ludicrous and lacklustre, of course. Before you think I’m a gayer or anything.
Mike, don’t you have a contact in SKY who could at least confirm from Jon Craig which pollster?
150 Nick P, Alex Salmonds government has suggested effectively banning custodial sentences of undr 6 months and was greeted with howls of derision, sadly mostly coming from my party and its allies.
My personal opinion is that prisons are there to:
1) punish serious offenders
2) punish recidivists who refuse to moderate their behaviour
3) prepare those incarcerated for returning to the outside world hopefully not to reoffend.
When I was in Porterfield, I was under protection because as a “high profile” prisoner I was deemed to be vulnerable to attack. I also spent 48 hours in a suicide cell which was a living hell. I had no privacy, was forced to sleep on a thin matress on a concrete floor, using a stiffened hospital type chamber pot for a toilet. The lights were kept on 24 hours a day, they played (what for me was) vile popular music 24 hours a day and I was wakened every 2 hours. Incidentally I was also denied access to a telephone and they tried to restrict my access to visitors until the Chairman of the Tory Association threatened the Governor with a reckoning if he did.
I should explain it was felt I was safer in the convicted prisoner wing than in the remand wing of those waiting trial.
When I was allowed to mix with other prisoners, I spent most of time listening to the most horrific personal family conditions from men who had never been listened to by anyone in their lives. These were petty criminals who due to the system being unable to properly rehabilitate them basically faced a seesaw of time in and out of prison until they grew out of it in their 30s or 40s. I was shocked at the level of mental illness and basic illiteracy. I was asked to read letters to some chaps and write replies to their wives/girlfriends.
Several men risked disciplinary action by approaching me with the sole purpose of asking me how I was coping and if I was being treated properly. I was totally humbled when one young chap,whom I had known since he was 12 (he was at this time only 16) and whom I had previously described in tones equating him with something picked up on the side of my shoe came to me one day and offered me an orange and asked if he could say something to cheer me up. On the outside I was subsequently able to thank him when I picked him up on the A9 when he was hitchhiking.
I am a fairly rabid right winger on many subjects but I do believe that we need a root and branch reform of the penal system. I suspect I share very similar views to those of Lord Archer, Jonathan Aitken and even Lords Watson and Ahmed and of course our very own SeanT
228, I hated Wuthering Heights. One of the most boring, tedious books I’ve ever read. I can remember almost nothing of it except my disappointment.
It may have been as bad as Dracula.
Boris moves to quash talk of him aiming to become PM:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2009/04/being-mayor-is-almost-certainly-my-last-big-job-in-british-politics.html
My favourite novel of all time is Snakehead. I don’t think you can beat the alex rider books.
That James Austin ponced all his ideas off of Bridget Jones.
FACT !!
I’m amazed to see stjohn is only 19.
On novels and in paritcular Jane Austen - Mark Twain got it right when he said ‘any library is a good library that that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other books.’
221 Scott - Apols, I was relating this to the corresponding number of Labour seats, i.e. 175-199. I think it’s better value to bet on low Lab seats rather than high Tory seats because of the prospect of the LibDems and the SNP making significant gains vs Labour, rather than simply relying on the Tories being the only beneficiary.
Don’t let me dissuade you though - you may well prove to be correct.
75. Easterross April 25th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Interesting post! You are never too old to be an MP!
On the otherside of the coin, the NOTW has certain nightmare qualities for any apirant Tory MP, indeed lately Labour MP’s!
230 - The book I hated was Tale of Two Cities, by about half way through I would have happily been guillotined.
[227] - Ah, so not suing over the emails then. Thanks for the info.
I go with Scotty F’s ‘Tender’ and Big Ern’s ‘Fiesta’.The latter choice is sheer masochism on my part.
235. PfP. The original request was for a Tory buy. I am quite happy with my Labour sells right now
Serious question. I fancy going to see a film later. And I am old enough for both of these. Which to go for? State of Play (Not the gallant 4th in the Grand National, tipped by PfP)? Or In the Loop? Or don’t bother?
233, 234. lol. What IS this male antipathy to Jane Austen. Trust me guys, you’re wrong.
However, I confess I had the same feelings myself until recently. All those terms of my A Levels studying “Emma”? Insufferably boring and trite. But then a coupla years ago I read Pride and Prejudice.
It is superb. AND funny. And nice and short.
120 Wibbler. “Dickens is far better”. Really? So you like books with outrageous coincidences - “David Copperfield” has at least five for instance and there are many others in his books - just careless, lazy writing. And you like turgid, sentimental scenes? Suggest you read the death of Smike in “Nicholas Nickleby” or any scene in Copperfield with the egregious Dora. Dreadful stuff.If any of the “great” novelists are over-rated, it is certainly not Jane Austen.
242 Scotty P.Anyone who Buys Tory Seats is just not paying attention.
Least favourite books I ‘had’ to read were all by Dickens.
Hard Times takes the biscuit though.
243-Old enough? 19 years?
244, not read it, but the best short books I’ve ever read were the Prince and Animal Farm. Both are fascinating political books.
245, about halfway through David Copperfield. Yes, there are a few coincidences, but I’m enjoying it very much nevertheless.
237. I think I managed about 2 pages of Ivanhoe at school before giving up on Sir Walter Scott completely.
228 - I have not read a Jane Austen novel but I’m tempted by this:
http://www.courant.com/features/books/hc-janeausten-zombies.art0apr24,0,507460.story
243. Saw In The Loop last night. It was superb. The reference to porn and the sight of a government fax machine being destroyed look worryingly close to the truth.
229. Jeepers. What were you inside for?? Sympathies.
But you’re right though. “A liberal is a conservative who’s been to prison” is correctly the opposite of “a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged”.
I am to the right of Darth Vader on many points, but penal policy finds me a bit weepy and fey. Coz I Done Bird, Innit.
244 - Sean, you’ve hinted at it right there. Males are put off Austen and her ilk because they are forced to read them at A-level.
244 - Pride and Prejudice is a very good book.
245. I hate to say this but - me too - I recently gave up on David Copperfield. There are some superb set pieces, great dialogue, beautiful imagery - but the plotting is lame, just naff and slow and - yes - turgid. And there are terrible longueurs where you just YAWN.
And it is sentimental. I liked Oliver Twist.
All of which makes the moderne brilliance of Pride and Prejudice more amazing.
On the literature front, can I recommend Jasper Fforde, whose novels essentially take place inside existing works of fiction. Thus, The Eyre Affair
Fforde’s heroine, Thursday Next, lives in a world where time and reality are endlessly mutable–someone has ensured that the Crimean War never ended for example–a world policed by men like her disgraced father, whose name has been edited out of existence. She herself polices text–against men like the Moriarty-like Acheron Styx, whose current scam is to hold the minor characters of Dickens’ novels to ransom, entering the manuscript and abducting them for execution and extinction one by one. When that caper goes sour, Styx moves on to the nation’s most beloved novel–an oddly truncated version of Jane Eyre–and kidnaps its heroine. The phlegmatic and resourceful Thursday pursues Acheron across the border into a Leninist Wales and further to Mr Rochester’s Thornfield Hall, where both books find their climax on the roof amid flames.
166 - You’re only thinking of strategy consultancies. I was a management consultant for a couple of years (still technically am until May 8th!) and we did our own delivery - overhaul of organisational design, IT implementations, working capital reduction, outsourcing deals, mergers - the works.
224 - They wouldn’t be quangos, they would be public sector businesses, competing with private sector business. eg Like when, in the future, an NHS PCT needs a care home, imagine the DWP needs a call centre. The government department (in Whitehall) should only have the policy wonks, politicos and commissioning people. They then run an OJEU tender to provide call centre services, or nursing homes. The winner might be the public sector company formed out of the existing DWP call centre, where all staff are paid as civil servants etc. If that company can survive, and compete then so be it. Conversely, Capita or Logica might put in a bid to run that call centre. If they win it, then they do so with SLAs and a good commercial contract that rewards improvements etc.
All the risk is externalised from the DWP, money is only paid if the SLAs are met, the private sector (or profitable new public sector company) bear the risk in return for massive revenue (but low profits because of the size of revenue offered).
There are things you couldn’t do this for - embassies overseas - but the majority of the civil service are in these roles that are recruited by volume. No reason to keep those functions inhouse at all. Outsource it, either to private or public sector, but make it a separate entity with its own P&L and paid in full only if SLAs are met. That way, if public services don’t work, at least we won’t have to pay through the nose for them.
@252: I second In The Loop.
If you want to see State of Play, go and buy the DVDs of the superb TV series from which the film is loosely adapted.
By the way, are we definitely getting a poll, and if so, do we know when?
@258: There is a delicate balancing act, though, when managing that commissioning process; the projects can’t be too small (or too few) to attract the larger players, but equally they can’t be the effective dysfunctional monopolies of the Local Service Providers in the NHS, which stifle innovation and squeeze out the creative (and often British-based) companies.
Since we’re doing classic literature I’ll offer Vanity Fair as boring the stuffing out of me.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame becomes a much better book if you only read alternative pages. It’s a cross between an excellent novel and a detailed comparison of 19th century and 15th century Paris, which gets tedious very quickly.
There will be no such thing as “private e-mails” if Jackiboots has her way.
261 - That’s the art of commissioning!
I recall as a 13 year-old at state grammar,a book set in the early 21st century where Zimbabwe -scale inflation and a police state saw the near-total collapse of British society-the title was ‘I’m The King of The Castle’(author I cannot recall)
The story hinged on a nclear family whose husband illegally hoarded essentials,and risked draconinan state action -I will google to try to unearth more (after all it was autumn 1984 when my then English teacher gave me this very good set-book!
The book centred on a nuclear family whose
The obligatory Man U penalty has been scored
257. As I recall one of the books includes the independant socialist republic of Wales.
I enjoyed them at first but tired of them after a book or two.
266, there’s a shock.
If you want to read a French 19C novelist I strongly recommend Zola.
La Bete Humaine and Germinal are both top stuff.
For the others stick to the film adaptations.
268 And it wasn’t a penalty. But then, you knew that…
F1 fuel weighting:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/f1mole/2009/04/bbc-sports-fuelcorrected-bahra.html
270, again, my shock is of literally fictional proportions.
Remember kids, vote Morris Dancer to criminalise supporting Manchester United!
252. Frank Booth/Matthew Adams. Thanks.
Problem is I don’t think we will be able to smuggle my 10 year old son into “In the Loop”. Oops! Gave the game away there. We managed to get him into “The Damned United” but the cinema where they are showing “In The Loop” practically ask to see your birth certificate before you can get into see the films.
265 BIG,BIG apologies-I’ve justed ‘googled’ and ‘I’m The King of The Castle’ was my set-book of autumn 1986-a totally different story,about two families where the psychological interplay tragically ends in a suicide
269-If you want to read Brazilian novelist, I recommend Machado de Assis.
271, oh, and remember Hamilton has the sexy KERS. If he gets a good start he could leapfrog everyone.
I’m supposed to be having a 10 day break from posting while I’m off work. However I will delurk because I can’t resist a poll watch! just to fan the speculation
1. is “Huge” a quote from the Lab Gen Sec or a description from Jon Craig.
2. If its the later I would take anything Craig says with a pinch of salt !
3. Does it follow that huge means an increase ? aren’t the tory leads already huge ?
269. Read La Bete Humaine last month. Good stuff, the French certainly have corrupt imaginations even back in 19C.
276 “I’m supposed to be having a 10 day break from posting”
We won’t tell
272-Oh my God, Stjohn, you had a child when you were 9 years old!!
@272: Do you know, I think “in the loop” is the ideal 10-year-old film. Wall-to-wall creative swearing? What 10-year-old wouldn’t love that?
269. another richard. I’ve read Germinal. Long and heavy but excellent.
Huckleberry Finn would be one of my all time favourites.
276 - I think it was LabGenSec, but then he would have motive for inflating the lead to keep people working…
As a Scot, I must say that Sir Walter Scott is one of the most entertaining writers of the early 19th century. The Waverley Novels are superb. Sir Robert Louis Stevenson is another author of action packed books. I am not ashamed to admit I am very fond of the Austens and like Sean T have a particular liking for P an P.
Thankfully in Scotland we weren’t forced to study Dickens since we had Scott but I have always been a Dickens fan and the Cheeryble Brothers were based on cousins, the Grants of Manchester.
Who would not agree that “The Way We Live Now” by Anthony Trollope is as relevant in Brown’s Britain as Gladstone’s Britain. Trollope is a superb author and again “The Barchester Chronicles” speak volumes on the moral attitudes and hypocracy of the time.
I havent been watching SKY News since I reported the comments from Jon Craig (as I’m presently watching that sh1t Starkey on SKY). Has anyone heard him say anything further in the past hour or so?
281, got to be careful not to Spoonerise the title though:p
I have to agree Craig suffers from motor mouth and hyperbole.
Damien Green arrested, and it was Tory MP going down, in mega trouble, big trouble for Cameron etc. Ken Clarke mumbles something positive about Europe at a private do months before being asked back to the shadow cabinet, and it is Clarke off message, in trouble, out of line, Tories in trouble now…
285, I think that’s right. Craig is the YouGov of political journalists: he exaggerates ever shift against a given party.
2-2
Usual anon loopy juice on Guido saying Tories 49, ZNL 22, 27% point lead
Sorry if this has been posted.
Being Mayor is “almost certainly my last big job in British politics”
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2009/04/being-mayor-is-almost-certainly-my-last-big-job-in-british-politics.html
210.One of ny favourites is Kidnapped, absolutely excellent story and have read it many times, the follow up Catriona is excellent as well.
3-2 To Man Utd
229: thanks very much for the further info, Easterross - probably not easy to write about it.
stjohn: haven’t seen In The Loop, but a Blair-hating Tory friend who went to see it in the hope of enjoying the satire at our expense said it was drearily obvious stuff, relying heavily on obscenity to spice it up. Obviously others disagree! I suspect it depends on whether you want to be surprised by new wit or simply enjoy familiar jibes.
270. Swings and roundabouts, they get one here, they didn’t get one in the FA cup.
SeanT. I think you are absolutely right about “Pride and Prejudice” and wrong about “Emma”, which is a wonderful book. If you have never tried to read it again since being forced by “A” levels, I am not surprised.Incidentally, you will know that the most-read novelist of all time, with total sales only exceeded by the bible and the envy of writers trying to scratch a living, is a woman! Novelists cannot ignore public choice - they can believe they are somehow “superior” and better able to judge good quality writing but it will not pay the rent.
258 The issue is accountability.
The commissioning organisation has to retain accountability to the public, especially for public services. We cannot continue with a set up like that with SATs where Balls & Knight, their civil service all disclaim any fault (weasel words of I take responsibility but no actual desire to do so) and put the entire blame on an agency and third party when things go wrong.
We elect people to take responsibility, to manage the provision of services whether through directly employed or indirectly employed, that accountability must have sanctions as well as rewards.
Robert Louis Stevenson is a great writer but alas never a knight (died to young in Samoa and married an older divorcee). RLS joined the Conservative Club in Edinburgh professing himself a “red-hot socialist”
NOTW on Dories sues/ Smeargate:
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/278966/Downing-Street-sued-over-Sleazegate-Conservative-MP-Nadine-Dorries-has-instructed-solicitors-to-issue-writs-on-Downing-Street.html
283 - No nothing new yet. Talking of Trollope he lived in my former home town for a dozen years. My current home town is replete with a blue plaque for a certain Scottish road builder but I digress.
4-2
I found In The Loop rather long and not half as funny as the TV series.
PS - I have always been rather fond of Dickens and enjoyed reading Great Expectations at School. Pride and Prejudice really is a brilliant book.
in the loop works if you like the TV programme to bits.
Took Mrs Saddo to it and left after 20 minutes of kiddy school swearing.
Total crap for most people I reckons
299, damnit.
Anyway, I’m going to run away for a while. Be back later, perhaps. Hope the poll lives up to the hype (unlikely, they rarely do).
299 - Don’t get to depressed.
299. Standard Tottenham then.
Nick Palmer MP April 25th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Are you not worried sometimes Nick they will say it is a trip round the prison but due to one or two rebel votes in your career they decided it is a one way visit!
303 I support Forest. “Depressed” is my footie default setting…
217. Agree , Martin should be straight to the tower, however advocating Ming as a replacement is too far, he is a rat of the first order, only the principles of McConnell stopped him and Brown doing a deal to have Labour / Lib Dems try to usurp the democratic vote of the Scottish people to have SNP government. He is the Lib Dem equivalent of Brown, a nasty piece of work.
292 Nick, thanks but I can assure you it is far easier to write about it 12 years after the event than experience it :-)Did I mention that I was told from a well placed source that it was a politically inspired prosecution!
I think P & P is brilliant. I can’t stand Dickens, and find Trollope produced excellent plots, overlaid with page of page of unnecessary padding.
I rather enjoyed Vanity Fair, and a minor favourite of mine is The Monk, by Matthew Lewis.
Jon Craig is utterly misrepresenting Boris in his report.
5-2
290 I read Kidnapped while suffering the effects of the cure for bilharzia (then it was basically injecting you with a large quantity of poison to kill the flukes, I believe they now have a more subtle and less debilitating cure) so have never been able to read Stevenson again, though I was until then a great fan of his, and also enjoyed R M Ballantyne & Frederick Marryat.
Back later to find out what Jon Craig meant. Starkers is beheading Anne Boleyn on Channel 4 and I have some genealogy to do.
Don’t know if someone posted:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/benedict_brogan/blog/2009/04/25/dave_v_boris_is_not_brown_v_blair
Philip Blond is the subject of ‘Profile’ on Radio 4 (on now)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jwqkp
Craig has just done a live piece on sky. Didn’t mention a poll.
By the way, don’t buy the sp on Boris. If this is his last job why is he fronting the Tory attack today ? His comments on Blair were funn !
I don’t think In The Loop should merely be seen as a satire on the Alastair Campbell years. I don’t think it was party political at all, perhaps only in the suggestion that the hawks in Washington were a bid mad. The doves certainly aren’t portrayed as heroic and the message is of a political class that’s a bit dysfunctional.
306 It would take an extrodinary turn of events for Notts Forest to not maintain their Championship status,cheer up!
316 - Because he is high profile and a bit of a loveable rogue. It makes tactical sense to put the Conservative message out using a cuddly figure like BoJo.
@306: This season I have replaced my Forest “depression” with “nervous hope”
316 Possibly it was an internal poll then for Labour. We will know shortly but hopefully Mike may get some notice.
Still no word on the poll? This is getting annoying now!
for 19th Century literature, Melville and Conrad both float my boat…
Moby Dick, anyone? Catch-22?
I didnt enjoy Midnight’s Children and thought Remains of the day was good, but probably not great.
P&P is great. I also must admit to enjoying Wuthering Heights.
322 - Won’t be out until at least 8 if at all..
323. Rod, what happens to the swingback theory if we get a poll in the next few weeks that gives the Tories a bigger lead than their hitherto biggest lead, which was 26% in a YouGov poll straight after the 2008 local elections?
According to today’s Telegraph Laurence Robertson, the shadow NI spokesman and MP for Tewkesbury has sent an email to colleagues about the reform of MPs expenses that must surely come soon.
Mr. Robertson is clearly one of those who is unable to differentiate between reclaiming expenses incurred and ripping off the taxpayer for private benefit because he concludes his email thus, “I certainly do not intend to become personally poorer…”
The swine in Mr. Cameron’s herd are still strong and growing ever fatter with their snouts fixed firmly in the trough.
Sci-fi greats anyone? Asimov, Heinlein, EE “Doc” Smith, AE. Van Vogt, Gibson, Herbert, Cherryh?
328. I like Asimov,, but I do tend more towards the Fantasy genre.
324. I liked Wuthering Heights with it’s brooding, vindictive anti-hero Heathcliff - who Gordon Brown claims to see a great deal of in himself.
283. Easterross, whilst we come from completely different political backgrounds, I was brought upin a working class Labour background but now SNP ,we both like the same authors. Always enjoy your posts.
324 Sorry Ken - “Remains of the Day” was a sublime novel!
For me the worst classic female author is Virginia Wolfe. Orlando is barely passable but I really could never get my head round the stream of consciousness style of To the Lighthouse.
Horrible stuff.
Love Jane Austen though… and theh various Brontes
330 Yeah - you can really see Heathcliff stapling his own hand…
I like anything by Graham Greene including his short stories. Another favourite is Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities.
332 - call me a pleb, but I thought it was a better film than a novel…
Lord Lawson piles in to 50p…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/5221118/Budget-2009-This-return-to-high-tax-will-only-deepen-our-debt.html
Books, books, books.
‘Best’ often influenced by fashion. Nobody seems to read Arnold Bennett these days, though it’s worth it. Same goes for Steinbeck, and Camus. Still unfashionable, yet my favourite book (best? dunno) is Kipling’s ‘Kim’. Wonderful descriptive prose.
328
Alfred Bester.
The Demolished Man and Tiger Tiger are two of the best Sci Fi books ever written. Even his less popular stuff like Golem 100 is brilliant.
Harlan Ellison named the psi cop Bester in Babylon 5 after him.
329. Corporeal. So are we talking -
Classic: Tolkien, CS Lewis
Pulp: Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber
Modern: Eddings, Feist
British youth is too fuelled by a capitalist booze culture to ever bother to be involved in politics.
Of course the communist booze culture of the former Soviet Union was more pevalent among the older citizens.
This May will be the first time in my life that I have deliberately decided not to vote; once my ballot was lost in the post on its way to la belle France.
Until we lose our career politicians who have no eperience of the real world [the death nell of NuLabour] I shall only vote in local elections for older, exerienced candidates who have done real work and for my sitting MP who had a full career until he became an MP.
292. Thanks Nick. I think I will wait until it’s on the telly.
I agree that Jane Austen is great. On Brontes; Wuthering Heights wasn’t for me. I’ve not read Jane Eyre.
There is an ‘Alistair Campbell’ figure in ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’, who appears to have not recovered from a breakdown. The PM figure appears to have Blairite characteristics, but will Brown inspire satirists, although I could almost imagine Brown portrayed as Richard III.
I enjoyed ‘Empire of The Sun’ both as a novel and a film. As for Jane Austen, Mrs Bennett is the Mother in Law from hell, Can’t say that I coped with Midnight’s Children, but found A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth a much more rewarding book to read, particularly on a long commuter journey.
Asimov & Heinlein both went off a bit towards the end, started re-reading Herbert & Van Vogt recently. Still enjoy the Tales of Known Space stuff from Niven and associates and remember Poul Andersen’s Technic History stories, Flandry and Van Rijn, with affection.
Sir Michael Caine doesn’t like the 50p….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/5221192/Michael-Caine-The-Government-has-reached-its-limit-with-me.html
340. If you’re a fantasy fan… have you read Abercrombie’s ‘First Law’ trilogy yet?
Best comic novel. Lucky Jim.
I’ve not read much P.G. Wodehouse but lots of good judges here think he’s brilliant.
345. Don’t forget Paul Daniels will probably leave the country as well!
331 - Malcolm -snap - my background is similar - I remember my late maternal grandmother telling me of the struggle she had from 1929 when my grandfather died due to being gassed in WW1 and being left almost destitute. It made her a Labour Party activist. I also enjoyed her stories of the 1922 General Election when Winston Churchill was defeated in Dundee. It seemed that the supporters of the Prohibitionist candidate who defeated Churchill all flocked to the pubs to cheer the result.
@338: Funny - we were just talking about ‘Kim’ here; I love it, but my other half has yet to see the “way in” for her.
JA is truly wonderful, as is GE & Middlemarch, which is a hugely underrated book; heavy going if foisted on a teenager, but a proper novel for grown-ups.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/5221063/Outdated-dogma-wont-get-Britain-out-of-this-mess.html
346. If you’re a fantasy fan… have you read Darling’s “growth Projections”?
344….Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, Neal Asher, Neal Stephenson, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Alistair Reynolds.. there’s so much good new stuff around it’s difficult to find the time to re-visit the oldsters.
352 -
344. Ted. Asimov vandalised Foundation - for which I am not sure that I can ever forgive him. I certainly could not forgive Ursula K. Le Guin for vandalising Earthsea. Heinlein was a bit gaga towards the end. Niven and Anderson are both good too.
331 Malcolmg I might have a fancy coat of arms and be related to some disgustingly rich people but my grandfather drove a refuse lorry for Glasgow Corporation and his wife, my grandmother’s mother was the daughter of a coalminer. I am also a blood relation of probably several thousand of the constituents of Glasgow East.
They are just lucky enough to not know they are my distant cousins.
I like two very different authors in the horror genre,M.RJames and H.P.Lovecraft.
347. Stjohn. Lucky Jim over Catch 22? I preferred the latter.
352. Yeah, read it. Didn’t like the ending, the baddies lived.
“332 - call me a pleb, but I thought it was a better film than a novel…”
No, it *is* occasionally possible for a film adaptation to equal, or even exceed, the original novel — Kubrick was particularly good at this, even if his final film/adaptation, ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ was a misconceived disaster on just about every level.
CoffeeHouse have put up a debt clock….
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/
Can’t omit the great Terry Pratchett, Discworld books are fantastic.
I had the great pleasure of spending a day with him, along with some of his family and Mr & Mrs Cunning Artificer.
Our local community shop & Post Office was about to open when we needed urgently to find a “celebrity” within a fortnight to do the honours. Terry is local and with little hope we gave him a call and asked, He rang back and not only agreed but got the Cunning Artificer to create a stamp and first day cover for the day and told his fans about it, turned up gave a speech, wore a special hat and spent all afternoon signing books, wandering around talking to people and ensured that the opening festivities were very successful. All for free, all organised at short notice. A good man.
358. ken. I’ve not read Catch 22.
Problem is I’ve seen the film and know the underlying premise. So I’ve been reluctant to read it for fear of being disappointed. But by not reading it I might be missing out on one of the great novels of all time.
Oh dear. It’s a bit of a …. quandary.
340. Not exaclty a stellar list you have their (in the modern category at least).
George R.R. Martin and Scott Lynch are my current favourites (I’d especially recommend GRRM). Abercrombie is on my to read list.
PfP,stjohn (aged 19) and Richard Nabavi.I am almost ready to unveil my sensational new betting strategy.
Sadly for me,although the execution was well-nigh perfect the amounts involved were not large enough.
357
URW, whatever else we may disagree on I cannot fault you on your choice of supernatural authors. I write ghost stories myself and James and Lovecraft, along with Le Fanu are inspirational authors.
352 — Or, if you’re a fan of H P Lovecraft, Steven King, Clive Barker et al, read the *real* economic projections, to get a chill down your spine…
355 Ken - quite agree on both Asimov & Le Guin. The masterpieces were cheapened by their actions (as in another field the raw reality of Rocky was destroyed in memory by the sequels).
Interesting about Micheal Caine. Have the champagne socialists revolted over the 50p tax? Blair has…
265. I recall as a 13 year-old at state grammar,a book set in the early 21st century where Zimbabwe -scale inflation and a police state saw the near-total collapse of British society-the title was ‘I’m The King of The Castle’(author I cannot recall)
The story hinged on a nclear family whose husband illegally hoarded essentials,and risked draconinan state action -I will google to try to unearth more (after all it was autumn 1984 when my then English teacher gave me this very good set-book!
I think I remember that one - except I can’t remember the title.
The best thing about being my age is that I first read “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in 1984.
362
I agree about Pratchett Ted. I think the comparisons with Wodehouse are entirely justified.
so no poll tonight then?
we would have heard by now wouldnt we…..
seanT wrote I went to a nightclub and realised that everyone was dancing in a way I had never seen before. Just a whole new way of spazzing out to music which I found completely inexplicable. I was 32. Everyone else was late teens early 20s.
Another friend of mine had the Epiphany recently. He’s mid 30s. He went to photograph some girls training to be cheerleaders - they were all about 16, 17, 18.
He tried some charm on them but they just looked right through him, didn’t even realise he was coming on them, he was so unthinkably old as a partner. My friend’s angst was compounded when he realised the only women in the room who were flirting with him were the cheerleaders’ mothers.
A second mate of mine has maybe the most poignant story. He’s in his 40s and he was recently smarming some young girl, maybe 22, and getting excited when she said “she liked older men”. Then he realised that when she said “older men” she meant guys in their early 30s, 35 at a pinch.
When even “older men” are younger than you, that’s when you’re old. lol.
I knew I was getting
oldmiddle-aged when I realised that I was more than twice as old as the people I was thinking about while m!st!rb!ting. It happens about 50% of the time these days. What’s even scarier is that it first happened about 8 years ago. I’m 40 but I want to be 23 again.366-Richard Tyndall.In my youth I read all the posh books and then in my early twenties I switched to horror short stories.
I read all those Pan books with the lurid covers.
After Brides Head appeared on TV I read all the Evelyn Waugh books, thoroughly enjoyed them. At the moment my bedside table is stacked with PG Wodehouse.
Teenage years revisited, most odd.
Nadine Dorries - will she accept a grovelling public apology or is she determined to drag these bastards into court with all the publicity that entails?
372-No. If there’s a poll, we will only know later.
372 - still time yet. The last Sunday Times poll came out late in the evening.
363. Stjohn. The book is better than the film. It is a great book. Also Wodehouse is very good.
374
In taht case you might be amused to hear that my ’stable mate’ at Ghost Writer Publications is a certain Guy N Smith.
370 Hi! As I stated when I self-corrected a few posts later,’I'm The King of the Castle’ was definitely NOT the book,that title being a set book I recall in late 1986.
Any info anyone could yield would be extremely gratefully received!
Eyes down for the poll..
340, George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is excellent.
372. Well, I think we can rule out a NotW marginals poll. They usually come out early in the evening.
I read “Oliver Twist” a while ago, but I found it incredibly difficult to take in because of the old-fashioned writing style. Most of the time I could only understand the details of what was happening because I know the story from having seen loads of films and TV adaptations. Similarly I expect I would have difficulty with “David Copperfield” despite what some people have said above.
My favourite fictional book is “Animal Farm” - I have read it dozens of times, and counted the number of words in it 5 times.
Would it be insufferably twattish of me to confess that my favourite author is Umberto Eco?
376
Grovelling apology…. wont happen and even if it does, I doubt Nadine would now accept it…., and Nadine should persue it thro the courts.
And re to 373,as a 38 year-old,I find it TERRIFYING that when I go to my local I am old enough to be the father of the youngest customers!!
Mmm. Thats funny, I went to edit the typo in my posting at 380 and was told I don’t have permission to edit that comment. Apparently I am not me.
Ted, Pratchett can be wonderful. Thud, Nightwatch, Jingo, The Fifth Elephant. He can also be off form - Lost Continent, Making Money. Definitely up there with Douglas Adams and Wodehouse.
381. I remember it as being “Thingy’s Whatsit” where “Thingy” is the name of the person, and “Whatsit” is something like “castle” or “ark” or “cellar” or er…
388-This always happens to me!
385
Not at all. Name of the Rose was a great book. I found Foucault’s Pendulum too full of obscure kabbala references to allow me to enjoy it in an era before google but might try going back and reading it again in the hope I might understand more of the underlying themes.
385. AndrewG. I think we are supposed to be sticking to English language authors. Eco is good, I enjoyed both Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum.
Two authors I have come across of late that I find particularly enjoyable are CJ Sansom and Simon Scarrow. Sansom writes a series of Tudor set mysteries against the backdrop of the Reformation and I have rarely found myself consistently unable to put a book down like I have with the four in that series. Scarrow writes a series of books about two soldiers in the Roman army and again they rattle along quite well too. Not likely to ever be classics but thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.
I would say Wodehouse is arguably the greatest English (rather than English speaking) author of the 20th century - certainly in terms of pleasure given.
By almost any measure he is the superior to the more *literary* Evelyn Waugh, who was a decent writer who produced a lush novel about eggs and fags, and one decent gag about Welsh schools.
The only rival to Plum as greatest English author of the 20th century is maybe Orwell, but I believe he was potentially a Jock.
387. Probably the grandfather of some of them!
326. Since swingback theory is based on by-elections, nothing will happen. Although I’m willing to bet the Tory lead on polling day will be smaller than their largest opinion poll lead!
Guys, if we dont get the poll then sorry but I definitely heard Jon Craig reporting a reference to one at the Labour Conference!
I had four years out before going to university. After I graduated, I was such a sad anorak with no life that I continued going to Student Union meetings (as a life member of the SU) for a further seven years, so I was regularly mixing with students who were 10 to 15 years younger than me.
I was having a conversation with one once, and I described someone as a “hoopy frood”. I remember being shocked when I gradually realised that the person I was talking to had no concept of knowing what a “hoopy frood” was.
381. 390. Was it “Schindler’s Ark”? Er…
397 - perhaps, but isn’t it also true that the Tory vote share is always slightly better than the best opinion polls for them?
397. I see.
400?
395. SeanT. The other pretender to that throne would surely be William Golding.
398 - I’ve heard about a poll from another source. It is possible though that their news originally came from the same place though.
I suspect it will come.
405, I hope it comes sooner rather than later.
394 - I meant to add my voice to the Pratchett fan club. Even when alone he has me laughing so hard I have tears in my eyes. It is such a shame that he is suffering now with Alzheimers.
399. WTF is a hoopy frood.
To be fare i only stoped going to the students union in Huddersfield in 2005. I got barred for obviously not being a student in the election debate - I was also Shit faced and wearing a suit!
398. Easteross. No need to apologise. I heard Craig as well. he definitely said something along the lines you indicated.
407, only read a hardback triple book of City Watch stories. Quite enjoyed it, although the absence of chapters threw me and ’should of’ instead of ’should have’ is a pet hate.
Anyway, I’m off again.
It is bizarre that Sky continue to headline the news with “Brown under pressure over 50p tax rate” and then produce no stories about it. It is the only part of the budget that is working for him.
409 - The newscaster now keeps saying that disatisfaction is expected to feature in the latest polls.
403. We’re trying to remember the title of a novel about hyperinflation in a near-future Britain.
410. Morris Dancer. So you have’nt read the Pratchett stories that include Morris Dancing? Including the Dark Morris?
http://magicintro2009.blogspot.com/2009/04/terry-pratchett-and-dark-morris.html
412. Certainly sounds like SKY have got wind of something.
408. Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“hoopy” : really together guy
“frood” : really amazingly together guy
as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is”.
407. Yes, a good bloke. Shame that his best writing (IMO) is ‘Once More… With Footnotes’ and is almost impossible to obtain without large wads of cash. It’s a collection of his essays, short stories and talks published to celebrate his being Guest of Honour at Boskone in 2005. Only about 7,000 copies, all hardback, no prospect of a new printing.
414, fine, tempt me out of the Cosy Kingdom of Lurkerdom!
These have been mentioned before, though I was previously unaware.
I can also exclusively reveal that the man dressed in black was not me.
397, I agree that the Tories won’t have a 28 point margin of victory in the election.
re 397. Largest Tory poll lead when Rod? In the final surveys or in the campaign itself?
JohnLoony April 25th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
I see! I never used to watch it so that is why it passed me buy!
419. This parliament…
404. I wouldn’t put Golding quite in that league.
A very fine writer, no doubt, but… perhaps lacking the brilliance of a Wodehouse or an Orwell (in their very different ways). IMHO.
My dad killed William Golding, by the way. It’s one of his favourite stories. He was round Golding’s house for a dinner party (in Cornwall) and Golding was in his cups and had had a fair few and everyone else had gone home but the author of Lord of the Flies insisted my dad stay for a final bottle, which he did. Then the Nobel laureate finally admitted defeat, totally smashed, and went to bed.
My dad then drove home after his five bottles of claret, none the worse, but Golding died that night, and alcohol might have played a part.
Hence my dad killed William Golding.
It’s yet another Oedipal Cross I have to bear. Now I have to kill a MORE famous Nobel Laureate than my dad did. I might aim for that guy who discovered DNA. Give him some jumbo crack or something, then a heartstopping five bag of gear.
Snowballs are always fatal.
What a sad bunch PB is. Been talking about a poll that might not even eist for about 6 hours!
414 - Pratchett comes up with concepts that are just so deliciously teasing. The Dark Morris is one of them, teetotal vampires is another one, the amateur historian in me loves characters like Constable Visit who are clearly based on the names given by the Puritans in the civil war period.
We’ve had Red Tory - Now we get ‘Blue Labour’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/apr/24/blue-labour-conservative-socialism
What next ‘Yellow Greens?’
“A top US health official said the strain of swine flu had spread widely and could not be contained. ”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8018356.stm
423 If John Craig knew about it in the early afternnon, it’ll be posted tonight. Although I dont bet myself, this site is about betting. What will it be??
425. No Yellow Taxi!
423-I see that you just joined this sad bunch!
423 Maybe so but we have confirmed that the PB community must be among the best read group of people in the UK (and beyond)with the widest knowledge of 19th and 20th century authors
I guess so! to be fair i am out getting drunk later :p
426. Just saw that. This could well be “The One” IMO. How ironic. For years everyone has been worrying about the H5N1 bird flu, and then out of the blue comes Swine Flu and takes everyone by surprise.
424. James Burdett. Captain Swing is a more recent invention. Then there was Lieutenant Blouse’s girlfriend, clearly named after the suffragette. There are indeed so many.
427.
Tories 47%
Labour 25%
LD 20%
Fun prediction above (LD’s are a little high for my liking!)
430-
434, I thought that was the poll then.
432. GIN April 25th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Maybe but it could be media hype! Remember Sars and Bird Flu had similar occurences.
431-I see that you are already enjoying something(you being drunk!) that hasn’t happened yet, like our poll!
I’m taking a very wild guess here and am going to say that a poll is in the pipeline showing the Lib Dems doing very well in relation to Labour.
I bought the LD’S on the strength of my hunch at 48.0 on the Line at Betfair.
432. Heard that it was H1N1 - or very close. This makes it a strain not unlike the 1918 pandemic variety, I believe.
432. Its perectly viable that the drugs stockpiled for H5N1 will be effective against this current outbreak.
437. Lets hope so Martin. The last thing the world needs is a pandemic of Flu in top of eveything else.
If Labour now completely bomb will Brown get pushed out after the Euros?
Two arguments against:
1) There would almost certainly have to be a quick GE so Labour MPs lose 8 months salary + allowances.
2) They cling to the hope there will be signs of economic recovery by May 2010.
Plus of course Cameron could stop the Lisbon treaty but individual MPs will only care about themselves.
426. Jeez, these really are the End Times, aren’t they?
War, Famine, Death, now Pestilence.
Anyone fancy a choc-ice?
443 - I think dumping Brown now is the surest way to guarantee a catastrophic defeat for Labour.
William Golding was a tutor at my son’s school, each year the head tells the first year pupils that Lord of the Flies was inspired by the students hurling themselves down the stairs at tuck break.
Little has changed in the intervening years!
442. GIN April 25th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Yes on the plus side i have a hoard of food plus as i am out of work i can stay out of the way of everyone one else! Just remebr to microwave everything including water!
On the pessimistic side, anyone ever noticed that when things go bad - they really turn nasty and you get alsorts of nasties turning up!
Buy Shares in Roche.
And Glaxosmithkline, apparently.
445 If the poll is as bad as John Craig allegedly has suggested, despite Brown being apalling, who could Labour call on??? It seems to me that none of the alternatives would do any better.
It would make for a good thread, but please dont anyone suggest Harriet Harperson, unless Labour want to be in oppsition for 30 yrs.
The Good Lady Marquee Mark is in LA - people there are “getting a bit twitchy….”
Get yourselves some T@miflu….
445 If the poll is as bad as John Craig allegedly has suggested, despite Brown being apalling, who could Labour call on???
Ghostbusters ???
444. If you liked that, you may like this.
Did Israel come within 24 hours of destroying the bulk of Iran’s air force?
http://debka.com/headline.php?hid=6040
Probably not, most of of what Debka publishes is tosh, though they do get the occasional scoop.
450. It’s on sky news now! (Again!)
Maybe this is what we need: a new Black Death, to sort out the Credit Crunch, the same way the Great Fire of London dealt with the Plague. But in reverse.
Let’s face it, if a third of the world dies of swine flu, the government deficit might not seem so bad.
Come on buboes! Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all fall down.*
*I have had a scotch or two.
452 URW you must have made money on the Man utd game>???
Just noticed - the usual suspects haven’t clocked on yet. They’re late. That’s usually a sign of bad news at HQ.
455 “Come on buboes! Atishoo! Atishoo!
We all fall down.”
The Man from QI - he says No. A mid-C19th US ditty with no links to the Black Death.
Although, as a House afficienado, you will know that certain southern US states do still have the bubonic plague present on a low level…
454 What are the figures then-don’t keep us in suspense,its driving me nuts!
456.Yup,MTF but I blew two huge opportunities pre-match.I liked the turnabout Spurs-ManU and also ‘Any Other’ (four goals for one or both sides) and did neither.
Did some ManU and Layed Spurs at H/T and traded ManU on the Premiership long-term.
457. But they’ve all been fairly scarce for the last few days - tim, gabble, Jonathan, Nick. etc.
I believe the appalling Budget finally knocked the stuffing out of ‘em. Even tim had lost conviction by the end. In a way it’s rather sad.
Heh.
459 - They keep flashing ankle, no money shot yet!
Now there is a thought. Perhaps part of Gordon’s curse is that he is The Last Prime Minister. I mean perhaps the title will be reintroduced a few centuaries hence when the libraries of Monastic Communities that retreated to greenland are found and published. However for all modern intents and purposes he is The Last.
Cameron will die with the other 99.9% of the Flu-Plague which will hit western population centres he day the Dow breaks the 1000 barrier and global food rioting breaks out ?
maybe the last post on this site will be Gordons last broadcast to the nation hurling a nokia at the screen with a plastic farm animal hanging from his plague ravaged hair ?
Maggie Thatcher Fan - I know what you are saying, but she would be adept at spinning this as a ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’, and that after a ‘bankers beanfeast’ a Woman with her eye on the Purse Strings and an Autocratic nature could be ‘Just what the Doctor Ordered’..
Remind you of anyone ?? Well okay, maybe not, but if Maggie was the antidote to the unions, then a bit of ‘nanny-statism’ might, just might, be seen as the antidote to going to hell in a handcart under the weight of unpayable debt…
However I’ve always that that Ed Miliband is the dark horse who Lord Peter of Mandelson will anoint as the successor…
But what do I know ? I thought Michael Portillo was the ‘Saviour of the Conservative Party’ ..
462, unless you have an ankle fetish.
SeanT April 25th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Or worry about global warming! No reprise of Europe and North america doing an Eden!
To those concerned PB’s who noticed the Huddersfield Pie explosion - I can confirm they have started production on another site! Indeed Grandma bought me a small pork pie and i scoffed it today! It looked different in texture but tasted alright!
463-
Wake up!
Labour’s only hope is to ditch Brown and replace him with Clarke (charles not kenneth) - Labour would still go down to defeat, but the defeat wouldn’t end up as catastrophic. Wonder what the betting is on Labour slipping to 3rd in the polls….
I notice that Nick Robinson’s BBC blog is taking even longer than usual to moderate postings, and even more are being banned “for breaking House Rules”. Even the usual Nu Labour supporters seem to have deserted ship, unless of course they are so ashamed they have hidden themselves away. The “Have Your Say” blogs are far more regulated and useless than ever. Right till the end they seem determined to follow the party line. Soon in will be to the bunkers. Reminds me of a similar event approximately 64 years ago.
465 - True. Although the suspense is getting too much
@196 (seanT)
I wasn’t trying to discuss the greatest English novel! In fact, most of the books I mentioned were not English…
But Emma is the only Jane Austen novel I have any time for.
The best writers in English were undoubtedly those of the Scriblerus club. The Dunciad had me in stitches. And Swift is Swift!
“There is a flu pandemic”
“Aha - ‘This is no time for a novice !’…”
URW
All my mates are Spurs fans. It was a good day for me , money or no money. Roy Hodgson must be in with a shout as Manager of the year. Its too passe to give it to the title winners.
More cock tease from SKY and they used the plural “polls”.
474 oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh!
‘This is no time for a novice or a f*cking Cnut!
Cherio Gordo!
473 Two points:
(a)Congratulations on Fulham’s voctory-if you finish above West Ham,fair play
(b)You’re a much more tolerant human being than me to have Spurs-supporting friends!
The sight of pb.com quivering with anticipation as someone says there’s a poll in the offing is always fun - like my Labrador when someone says “walk!”
b. - nice to see we agree on something - Vernor Vinge. A Fire upon the Deep is my favourite novel in any genre, and A Deepness in the Sky isn’t bad either (couldn’t relate so much to his others).
Nadine Dorries: errrr…is it possible to sue a street?
Martin Day at 305:
If we think about this logically if Sky are training it - would it not be likely it is a murdoch paper? So News of the World or Sunday Times?
“Remains of the Day” is bloody great. For the 19th century, “Les Miserables” is teh biz. Forget the musical. Probably many translations available, but the cheapy Wordsworth Classic is fine. As a bonus item, it includes a long, entirely irrelevant, chapter giving a vivid account of Waterloo.
461. But they’ve all been fairly scarce for the last few days - tim, gabble, Jonathan, Nick. etc.
Perhaps that flue got them; the swine.
478.
479. Tthat makes sense. Or merely that the fgures have leaked and they are embargoed. To justify the teasing ( and of corse it may not be justified) I think it either has to be (a) Con lead 20% plus (b) a tie with the Lib Dems or third place. As we have an upto date You Gov with a 9% gap between LD and Lab i wonder if its (a) ?
Not that I’m speculating with no evidence base. Oh no !
I had a copy of “Midnights Children”, with a bookmark left in. My friend spotted it, and shouted out “page 34″. Sure enough, that’s where the bookmark was. It may get better later on, but the first bit is about two boys catching a bus to take a ferry across a lake. It’s a bit lyrical. And by p 34, you’re thinking “Just cross the bloody lake already…”
Great to see Southampton on the way down.
479. That would make sense but didn’t Craig suggest he got his info from the Labour Sec Gen.
Maybe its Labour’s internal polling that says they are dead ducks and he is worried about having signed on for all their debts.
This flu, which began in America…
(…Which apparently it has)
478. I noticed you dissapeared from PB for a couple of days after the budget Nick.
Nerves or coming down with something?
478. Nadine Dorries: errrr…is it possible to sue a street?
LOL! Of course not but it is possible to sue the Government.
Now I wonder who will take the lead on this for the Government? Could it be the Minister for Digital Defamation (oops that should be Information shouldn’t it)?
485 Mike , thats unlike you.. Why???
Sean fear said at 59 “I think the difference in outlook between right wing and left wing women is even sharper than that between right wing and left wing men. Left wing women will view themselves as an oppressed group, even when their own personal circumstances are actually very privileged ones. Right wing women don’t see themselves in that light.” to which should be added “..even when they are oppressed”
486. Yes, sods law says after all this speculation It’ll be either unpublished or something “huge” like 17% which will acually be no change. thought the fact hat a 17% tory pol lead would fel lke an anti climax tell you something. I do hope i don’t have to go ahead with my Nuclear Bunker purchase !
So when do we expect this poll?
478
Nick, Its only because of what John Craig said on Sky. PB’ers are wondering how bad it might be for Labour. No doubt you are too.
485 - And why would that be, Mike??!! (I write as a long-suffering Saints fan..)
Crikey I have put a sound card in on this machine at home and it is great! U-tube/dailymotion is good for tunes! Reliving my youth! Poor next door neighbours!
Unfortunatly i think they heard me watching a p0rn0 earlier!
If anyone want the link……
re 490. first of all they were playing my club - Burnley who look pretty good for a play-off place. Secondly one of the people I most dislike is a Southampton fan and I always hope that they will do badly.
Someone has done a downfall video of Iain Dale… to his credit he has put it up on his blog…
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/04/verdammt-nochmal.html
488. weathercock April 25th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
The up and coming member for Broxtowe probably had something to attend too!
497
LOL Mike, AS I have said, all my mates seem to be Spurs fans. I ALWAYS want them to lose!
Give me any system that does not allow Labour to implement their “Glenrothes” voting procedures.
496 - Martin you should spotify.
497 - Well we’re not all hateful sorts! Good luck with your play-off hopes
Any upstanding citizen wants Spurs to lose.
478. V.V. good stuff, yes. ‘True Names’ was a landmark novella - he beat Gibson to ‘consensual cyberspace’ SF. Got a couple of his books signed - and his handwriting is very odd, almost runic in form and damn near unreadable. For a prof in maths and again in computer studies… very unexpected.
Defection Alert:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/liberaldemocrats/5220109/Liberal-Democrat-candidate-defects-to-Tories.html
O/T - Bea Arthur of the Golden Girls has passed away.
499 Up and coming?
I thought he was down and going.
I havent noticed much comment on Oleg Gordivesky’s claim that the late Jack Jones was in the pay of the KGB…or maybe even was informing the British Security Services about approaches made to him.
507 - that is a shame - she was always a class act
Not sure if this has been posted. Nothing about any new poll but some details of Labour’s internal polling.
http://blogs.notw.co.uk/politics/2009/04/mp-expenses-will-cost-brown-the-next-election.html
Listened to Parris on working for Thatcher. Lots of stuff we know but was intrigued by the fact that among the loyalists coming to see her the night she resigned to beg her to stay on and not resign was one Labour MP - was it Frank Field?.
497. You got a future star there in Martin Paterson. That boy was a thumping buy.
Labour Minister bet on Brown to lose next GE back in 2007:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6169072.ece
508. weathercock April 25th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
You never know with Mp’s! He migh experience a hairy moment but power through!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/5220964/Alistair-Darling-was-told-two-thirds-will-dodge-new-50p-top-tax-rate.html
498. I thought that was blo*dy funny.
512.
And a new You Gov Poll, out today, shows Labour are now 18 points behind the Tories - giving the Conservatives a potential majority of at 150 seats in a General Election.
NOTW
Guilty peers broke code of conduct and face suspension:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6169068.ece
“And a new You Gov Poll, out today, shows Labour are now 18 points behind the Tories - giving the Conservatives a potential majority of at 150 seats in a General Election.”
http://blogs.notw.co.uk/politics/2009/04/mp-expenses-will-cost-brown-the-next-election.html
518 - That was yesterday.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/5220833/Labour-split-over-income-tax-rise.html
518 - isn’t that the same as the last YG?
Sitting PPC’s going is never a good sign. I think im right in saying that we have had 9 former candidates go Tory since the last general ( though one went the other other way a few weeks ago). However sitting candidates going is bad. Admittedly she was hardly high up the target list but ust not good.
is tht the poll or the poll from thursday?
Must be a Murdoch paper that has the poll, sky being from the same stable, they will also know the breakdown
A good indicator of just how it is for people in the rcession and why they seem to to have more commonsense than the government.
http://www.onlyfinance.com/Debt-News/12755879-UK-consumer-rush-to-pay-back-debt.aspx
525 - figure wise, yes. Surely YouGov haven’t done two polls right on top of each other?
512
As I understand it Maggie and Frank Field were and are friends and respected one another. But far from trying to make her stay on I was under the impression from previous postings on this that it was his intervention above all others that convinced her she should resign as she would be fatally damaged by continuing to stand.
68 deaths from 1000 infections in a flu that is human to human transmitable sounds grim.
http://www.spotify.com
“News Review Interview: David Cameron
The Tory leader opens up on everything from tax and state spending to smears and that supposed embarrassing illness”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6168263.ece
re 520 I wonder whether the NOTW is referring to the Telegraph’s YouGov poll yesterday. That had an 18% Tory lead.
520. Says new poll out today with 18 point gap.
530 so was there another Labour MP who didn’t want her to resign? Definitely stated that it was to ask her to stay on.
512 Frank Field did see Margaret Thatcher, and asked her to resign, before her own side tore her to shreds , his words
533.
A free link to anything you want! 
538-
re Frank Field.
Her backed her for a while and then said it was time to give up before…Maise has filled in the rest.
528. One thing I dont like and never have is porn, Martin.
New Yorks Medical Officer reports that there are signs of an outbreak amongst half a dozen school children that is likely to be of Swine Flu
Suspecting Craig has misheard or misspoke.
Yellow Sub @531. Yup. It’s a higher case fatality ratio than 1918, which was nasty enough. Still, it’s only 10% of H5N1 cfr.
528
Not good to post a link like that when some of us are on computers at work. Could cause serious problems.
b. - there was supposed to be another Vinge in the “Deppness” series in the pipeline - do you know if that’s correct? Much more interesting than a poll
Sky have just used their cock tease line again. I’ll be ery cross if there is no poll because they are dropping so many broad hints that there is one and they know what the result is. I’m wondering if its a one off for the Sunday Times ( Murdoch). But don’t the sundays print earlier than the week days ? we’d know by now ?
Things are bad when John Prescott has to be wheeled out to defend Gord and the 50p tax
543. Sky are starting each newsround with a comment that they expect it to hit Labour in the polls. Perhaps Sky have advanced knowledge?
It could that there is a/are poll(s) to be released early next week where sufficient results are known to suggest that Labour are going to be well behind.
Hmm my posting about Tam#flu obviously annoyed the system. Not sure why. Just saying that it was good news that it was effective.
weathercock April 25th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Sorry about that! It does not bother me but I have seen allsorts online including beheadings, executions and the lot! It makes you desenitive as a person and you become a bit disconected! That does not really seem insenitive to me online but it certainly is not something i would show to family etc - It ceases to bother!
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Watford safe - top!!!!!!!!!!!
Lets go for promotion next time!
Well done Man U - the best team in the world!
Commiserations to Hull - I called their relegation on here in Jan -they will be in League 2 in five years
Birmingham bottle jobs?! HAHAHAHAHA
Well done Peterboro - who have the best young manager in football! Yes Barry Fry!!!
And yes Bournemouth justice is done!!!!!!!!!!!!
528. Anybody on a work computer could be in real trouble if tey followed that link. The odd visit to PB.com s OK on my hippy employers internet policy but porn is a NO, NO. I’m not on a work computer at the moment but if I had been then I’d be really worried.
546. Don’t believe so - and Fantastic Fiction doesn’t show any
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/v/vernor-vinge/
This site is a god-send to any SF/fantasy/whodunnit fan
Lists all the authors (except Tom Knox, though that is surely only a matter of time), all the books, all the editions hbk and pbk plus the forthcoming books of each author.
546 nick p - how do you feel to be a part of the government who has:
- RUINED BRITAIN
- MASSIVELY RAISED MY TAXES
- Made bringing up children out of wedlock IE BASTARDS the preferred option???
New thread
546 / 554 - I believe there is rumoured to be another ‘Deepness’ work in progress but some way off - think Vinge might still be writing it so could be a while yet.
552 - are Bournemouth safe from relegation now?
557 YES!!!!!!!!!
555. Nick Palmer dosn’t feel, Ave it. Like all Labour Mp’s who proclaim for the so called masses, when it comes to their own seats they’ve got sticky bums.
551. I’m not disturbed by anything that appears on screen or internet or even come across in real life, but porn just disgusts me and always has, call it an affectation if you will.
BA Crew member taken to hospital with “flu like symptoms” returning on flight from Mexico to London according to SKY News
413 John Loony. Hyperinflation features in HG Wells “The Shape of Things to Come”.Never read Pratchett - Can someone point me to the best (and funniest - I need a good laugh).